Last Sunday, as I have been doing, I went ahead and performed 6 songs on Periscope. Now, the way that I had been doing this, my daughter has been holding the camera during the performance, so I don't see any of the comments or anything while they're happening; I have to wait until later when my crappy Internet connection will allow me to watch it back. And last Sunday, when I finally got around to looking at the replay, the level of lewd, crude, rude, uncouth, and obscene comments was unbearable. These guys just... they made me feel ashamed, not for the horrible, awful things they were saying, but for the fact that there were people there who had actually tuned in to watch me sing and play some music, and these turd burglars ruined it for everyone. These childish, lonely, backwards dudes took something lovely and made it something awful with their commentary.
I've mentioned in the past how badly I've been bullied and abused, often at the hands of people I should have been able to rely on and trust, so the shame I felt knowing that my very existence (namely, my boobs) was the cause that regular people were subjected to such nonsense was overwhelming. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. These idiots made the entire thing about my breasts, instead of keeping their dirty, filthy thoughts to their juvenile selves.
At first, I was going to delete everything. I left groups I was in on Facebook, prepared to delete my pinup page, my band page, and my author page. I was ready to go full-on hermit. But, now, a couple of days later, I've had some time to think about it. Now, I know that I am through with Periscope; it is clearly not a venue for a busty lady like myself to play some songs for interested people. Instead, I will still broadcast, but it'll be somewhere else. I don't know where yet, but some other channel.
It is incredibly difficult to build your confidence after abuse and bullying. It has literally taken me YEARS since the divorce and the end of the abuse for me to even allow myself to be photographed or filmed. For most of my life, I believed that I was fat and ugly and worthless and talentless and it's taken considerable effort to shut all the negative self-talk spawned by years of abuse to be able to get on camera and perform. The shame I felt from being the cause of the awful things those guys were saying last Sunday nearly overwhelmed me; luckily most people have been understanding about where I am coming from.
My ex used to tell me things like, "You're not wearing that, are you? It makes you look heavy." and "Girls your size don't go out looking like that." and "What size are you now? I know you've put on weight since you had the baby." Hell, he even bought me diet pills for Christmas one year. And I kept telling myself that if I could just lose weight or make more money so I could dress better that I would suddenly become valuable to him... but that never happened. I failed. He left me for some whore he met in a bar playing pool. It's taken a lot of love from my new husband and a lot of encouragement to get me to this point, so, when things like what happened on Sunday happen, I go right back to that place of feeling completely useless, worthless, and a waste of space. I don't know what I am going to do, but it's going to be tough not letting this get me down.
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