When The Darkness Takes Us: Jess's Story

Crazy Lady

So many things happen in so short a time. And I do all of them.

I film a video on my phone. Crying, rambling. I sound and look insane and I know and I don't don't care. I feel so much so much so so so so much. I have to do something with myself.

I look into the phone fully intending to vent about Richard and I don't.

Instead I say, "When I was nine, we had this dog.."

And it makes my head swim. It makes me feel like my body will tear itself apart, but I tell the world what my mom did to the dog, I post it to the internet.

After that I go to my blog. I post and post and post.

How could you why did you why why why.

I know the more I go off, the crazier I am.

I can't make myself care.

Even if I am crazy, he was wrong. He was wrong to laugh at me. I never laughed at him. I never ever would.

And is it like he never did anything that I could have laughed at?

Lost his virginity to a prostitute. Went on a weird tangent on Twitter about how ugly vaginas are. Mentions and defends cucking a lot. Might have a cucking fetish.

I could have laughed at him. God knows a lot of my online friends did. The curious writers who went to take a peek at this manosphere dweller their erratic friend was fixated on. And I snapped at them. "Don't talk about him like that. Be nice to him. Please? Give him a chance. He's amazing. He's so smart and interesting."

I didn't laugh at him. Because I saw the man underneath the weirdness. Or I thought I did...And in any case, he didn't see me. He sees a joke. He laughed at me. Fuck fuck fuck I can't believe he laughed at me.

I'm back to thinking about my mom. The way she used to laugh at me. I don't know why I keep thinking about her. She's not the one that I'm upset at. What the FUCK is my brain doing?

I grow tired of posting on my blog.

And then..

Then..

I hardly know what I'm doing. When I stop for just a second to think about what I'm doing, I barely believe myself.

Stop it, Jessica. Stop it. You have to stop it.

You have to.

But I don't.

I post, "I'm so fucking lonely and all of you say you're so fucking lonely and you're not. You're whining for nothing. If a woman threw herself at you, you'd run away or you'd laugh at her. I know because I am a woman and that's what I just did. Fucking threw myself at one of the pathetic idiots in your community. He laughed at me. He was so mean to me."

I can't believe I'm on this site. I can't believe I'm doing this.

I don't know why I want to see what they say; the men in this toxic and nasty misogynistic community. Why am I doing this to myself?

I glance under the bed and the metal on the gun glints in the rays of moonlight streaming through the dusty slats of vinyl.

I get exactly what I expected. They are cruel. They insult me. It's not exactly entertaining. It's not exactly cathartic. Yet somehow...it almost is.

Then the post is taken down. A message from a mod informs me women are not allowed to post, and the message is so perfunctory and polite that I almost feel guilty for stirring up irritation on purpose.

I scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and eventually, end up back at my home base, my discord server.

DMs. Lots of them.

"Jessica, what are you doing?"

"J...what is happening on your youtube channel?"

"Do you really want to be posting all of that? Take a second to calm down."

And two friend requests. I don't recognize the names. I accept.

It doesn't take long before I have a DM from one of these strangers.

"Hi, crazy lady. Want some dirt on Richard?"