Hello, Tumblr. I know I often ask for you not to reblog my work lately. I’m going to say upfront—this is a post I would very much appreciate you to reblog, I will be forever grateful to you for it.
If you are a constant follower of my blog you have probably already noted that I often make several posts private after small amounts of time. I have never felt like it was necessary to explain, but now I do. The reason I make posts private after posting, is because my writing is something that is absolutely personal to me. For years I have been digging at myself to be more open, to talk about things, to give myself an outlet. This is the only outlet that has ever truly worked for me.
From ages 3-10, my mother was married to a man that severely abused me for the entirety of that time gap. I was beaten as well as verbally abused, I remember waking up in the middle of the night to his face and his hands turning my mattress over on me, making sure my face was buried so I couldn’t breathe. This was routine. He didn’t allow my mother to let me eat with them at the dinner table, I had a room in a locked basement and I would get a plate of dinner at the top of the stairs unless he took my mother out of town. In which case, I wouldn’t get to eat for days at a time. I remember when he would set the plate of food on the stairs there would often be spiders or some other kind of bug inside my drink. His hand often gripped the back of my neck when I would walk. I wasn’t allowed to speak when I was spoken to. I wasn’t allowed to smile, or emote in any kind of way. I was made to walk up and down a set of stairs and get a whip with a belt every time I came to the top. There were never reasons for these punishments, but they never stopped and as I got older, the beatings got worse. When my mother found out that he had tried poisoning me, she told me of her plan to leave. We were waking up at dawn just after he left for work. We fit our entire lives into her ‘92 Jeep Wrangler, and we ran. For days. Across the country to Chicago. I read her the maps as I was as terrified as she was. But we made it. And I met all of this family we had never been allowed to meet before and for the first time in my life, I felt safe. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t lived through such aggressive abusive could ever understand how different being alive looks when you feel like you have been trapped your whole life.
From ages 10-14 I was in therapy and prescribed Prozac. If anything, it made matters worse. Since human relationships are especially difficult for those who have lived in abusive households for such a long time period, it was suggested that I kept up with ways of expressing what I felt, some way to bring those wicked thoughts out of my head because I’d been labelled “potentially suicidal.” And I was. I was always kept on watch. And then It started with drawing, painting, but I never liked the outcomes. I geared into photography (which I still love), but when I wrote my first poem, I knew. This was it. This eased everything I felt. I never really published too much online until about two years ago, but I never really felt like I was progressively growing as a person through my writing until Tumblr. Being able to look back at my archive has shown me so much about myself that I never saw prior.
So, where am I going with this?
It was brought to my attention late last night, that my very personal works have been stolen. Yep. Plagiarism. This topic something I have always taken very seriously. I am often even offended when I catch plagiarism that isn’t even of my writings but of another person’s. However, in this case: I found a blog and spent quite a bit of time strolling through this girl’s archive. I found basically every single work I’ve ever published to Tumblr dating back to when I first began. I also found several of my personal photos posted without credit, typewritten pages stolen with “you guys should really invest in a typewriter, I’m glad I did” typed out underneath them. I scrolled through her “writing” tags and found that every single one of those posts is my property, except this one, which I believe is Angela’s. And there are several more that are untagged. What I found most appalling about this entire situation, was that she not only stole my poems, but also my prose—she stole posts about my sick grandfather, people I loved who don’t even exist on this earth anymore due to suicide or illness, the abuse I suffered that I’m sure she has no idea how hard it was to endure for so long, the one man I have ever loved, and the dozens of men I dated who I was never enough for. I am a very private person but here was the place I could go to other than a journal and perhaps reach out to a reader here and there who is suffering from abuse, depression, abandonment, or even trying falling out of love, or grieving a death. I honestly believed that anyone who follows me here, would be able to respect what I have disclosed or allowed to be seen and read and felt by readers. The one thing I never expected to be stolen from me is what I have been through and what I have lived and seen. I never have written anything for attention, or sympathy, I don’t need either, I don’t thrive on either—I have only continued blogging because I have received enormous amounts of positive feedback from people who have thanked me for helping them without even knowing I did so.
I understand if you like my work. I do. But I also understand that by stealing it, claiming it as your own, pretending you lived through what someone else did—that’s not fair. That is one of the most dishonest things you could do to someone, and not only the person you have stolen from but also yourself. What else are you lying about? Are you that bored with your life that you have to take someone else’s? I think the person with the biggest problem of all is the one who can’t face their own reality, that person who doesn’t know who they are or who they will become, that person who sits behind a computer waiting on what you’re going to say next, that person who takes what you are feeling that day away from you. I am deeply, deeply sorry for you and your very small existence in this world. But I am even more sorry that you don’t even know why your existence is small. Let me tell you why. You may feel similar things to what I felt when I wrote some of those things, you may feel worthless sometimes or completely alone or whatever it is—you feel that way because you can’t say what you really want. You measure yourself in someone else’s shoes. You feel worthless, why? I don’t know, it’s probably because you can’t even muster up your own fucking words. You have to take mine.
I have one thing left to say. And that is, I really hope that one day you find four things: happiness—true complete fulfilled happiness, darkness—complete darkness the kind that makes your soul weak and your sanity come to question, love—the kind that comes without question and unlike any other feeling in the world, and loss—the kind that cripples you whether it be loss of that love or loss of a loved one’s life or both at the same time that way one day you can learn how to appreciate just how fucking beautiful life really is outside the “life” of the computer screen. I know you can’t possibly know how beautiful life is because you have stolen very large pieces of mine.
By the way, the gorgeous woman you’re claiming as your mother… Well honey, you’re confused, this is not your mother. Or this. And this is not your family either. They are mine. All mine. Also, finding these photos was one of the most perplexing moments I felt while I was finding pretty close to everything I’ve ever published online.
This is my public announcement letting you (yes, I found pictures of your face and am posting them because I want the face of a liar to be seen) know, that I have contacted Tumblr Support concerning this issue yet I am hoping you will see this (and also anyone else who may read this who is currently stealing someone else’s life and pretending it’s theirs) and realize that you will not get away with it forever. That you will look pathetic. But you have a chance still. To become a better person. Please, please, please, always think twice. There is always much more behind words than you know or believe, sometimes words are not just meaningless stories of fiction—sometimes words are all you have of your soul. And those words you steal from someone else—that past—you couldn’t steal anything bigger than that from anyone. Not in a hundred lifetimes. Not even in one. Live your own life, write your own truth.
Sincerely with a heavy heart, Phoebe Nale (and every other writer, photographer, or creator, who lives on this earth to experience it and not steal from it.)
