Cause and Effect - How Misinformation Can Hurt In The Long Term

I'm sure that most of you know the story of my failed relationship and subsequent suicide attempt. You've read the hubs and have been moved enough to leave me nice comments and e-mails encouraging me to feel better. This has not gone unnoticed by me or my former lover. I will always love her and remember the good times that we shared. They aren't ever far from my thoughts. She is a good person overall and tries to always do the right things, lest her definition of bad karma pay her a visit. And she is right about our responsibility as readers to realize that a lot of the things we read are from a certain perspective. She has hers and I have mine. I'm not perfect and neither is she.

I wrote a hub about writing about your ex. As I'm sure that you know, I used to write many angry, hateful, vitriolic blogs about my former partner. None of it untruthful, albeit painful to read by the subject of the writings, I am positive. But what many people DON'T know is why I wrote what I did.

While I was recovering in a mental unit at a local hospital, the Sheriff showed up one day...not to pay me a visit or wish me well, but to serve me papers and a restraining order filed by my former love the day after my suicide attempt. In Florida, there are only a few categories that you can file a restraining order under. She filed it under "fear of domestic violence". She claims that I would have killed her first before trying to kill myself since there was a gun at the scene. (I couldn't use the gun on myself, that's why it was there. I guess I should have packed it up and put it away in my state of emotional pain before I busted out the carpet knife she had given me the day before). Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only was I already in a bad state of depression, but I was having to deal with her ending the relationship without seeking further help for previous issues that she has that helped cause her mistrust of men in general that she blamed ME for. Of course, as someone who suffers from depression herself, she had no intent of maybe identifying the symptoms of depression and pointing her partner in the right direction to seek help. No, all she had to do is play the "helpless single mother" card to make me look like a monster.

But the crux of the reason is the fact that, if you look up my name in the county database, you see a big DOMESTIC VIOLENCE next to my name.....never to be stricken from the record.People who aren't in the know about what REALLY happened will assume the worst: I'm a wife beater. What if this keeps me from getting a promotion or other job?

At least her and her computer geek friends can scramble around having the information and her name taken out of Google searches, which I just kept putting back in there.

I don't have that luxury.

I've taken down the offensive content and images that were strewn all over the Internet. I think she knows how I feel now about having your name dragged through the mud and having an open ended charge in public view opened to debate and as she says, perception and opinion. One thing that I don't understand though is this : Why would she have robots restrict tags on my FITNESS blog? I've never made a mention of her on that blog EVER....nor would I. It's something I've done AFTER our relationship imploded. I just don't understand why she'd have someone hijack that feed and keep keywords like "L-Arginine" and "dedication" from showing up in search engines since it has nothing to do with her. HUH?

Another difficult part of having to deal with this is the stigma at work. The less than confidential Human Resources Department spilled the beans after the Sheriff showed up at my place of employment to serve the restraining order to me. It seems that they were unaware that I was still in the hospital, since they can't get the information from the hospital themselves unless they had a special code. This triggered all sorts of inquiries about me from my co workers, until they found the information WHERE? That's right....the County Database. Add this to things such as the Quiznos commercial where the talking toaster is in the stereotypical therapists office and you get an office full of folks who claim to be afraid of me and think I'm crazy and like to run to my supervisor and state this.

Writing those venomous blogs helped me to get to the place of peace that I'm at today. My therapist didn't know at the time that I was doing it on a public forum, using names and places of employment. I've since been chastised for it.

I'm SO much better than I was, months ago. My focus on health and fitness has really helped me I'm sure. I not only look better, but it's helped quite a bit in FEELING better as well.

I'm sorry that my former lover is haunted by the memories of finding me, almost dead every time that she enters her bedroom, but I also knows how good she feels about helping save the life of someone not wanting to live without her. Now I can only wonder if she'd like to help pay the medical bills accrued by her call....but at least it gives her something to write about. These days, it's quite easy to accuse someone of abuse, being a victim, and emotional battering via the written and sometimes, spoken word. My advice is to strengthen your own resolve, much like I have. You'll be a better, stronger person for it. I can remember my former love sobbing and saying that she was "tired of being strong". As evidenced by what I did to myself, This cannot be an option.

We all do strange things and have issues in this sometimes crazy and tumultuous world...

And that's just My Mind, Spoken.