Somebody Doesn't Like Me

Somebody out there doesn’t like me, and he’s spent the past several years trying to post comments to this blog telling me what a contemptible loser I am. Well, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve lived an uncommonly diffident, shy, socially awkward, unaccomplished, and unexemplary life. But what I don’t understand is why this person cares so much that he wastes all this time reading my posts and sending comments that don’t get published and also posting nasty comments supposedly from me to a friend’s blog. 

Do my admitted shortcomings unconsciously remind him so much of his own that he vents against his own by disparaging me? I guess this is a question I’ll never be able to answer, because this individual will probably never summon the courage to venture out from behind his wall of anonymity and relate to me as a human being instead of as a faceless, pseudonymous antagonist with an unspecified grudge.


I keep referring to this person as a “he” because I can scarcely imagine a female exhibiting such compulsive antagonism toward someone she’s never even met. This kind of unseemly behavior appears to be the province of disturbed maleness. Men are supposed to be strong and capable, and a weak man might feel compelled to insult and ridicule another man’s weakness in place of his own. Maybe his initial moniker of "Shirley" subconsciously points to his estimation of his own masculine potency.

I seem to recall that “Shirley” did once upon a time suggest a motive for his ongoing insults. They were benevolently meant to “help” by confronting me with hard truths that would provoke me into changing the sorry course of my life. Well, I have a suggestion for my compassionate would-be “helper.” Tell me something I don't know about myself. Tell me I can rise above my limitations instead of persistently berating me for having let them get the better of me. Extend a strong hand of friendship or at least kindness instead of a flaccid fist of hateful vilification. Otherwise, what’s the point?