Justice, revenge, or both

Most of the people I talk to about the problems I had with teenage lads in Kilkenny try to minimize the issue.

That's okay. Nobody who hasn't been harrassed in a whisper campaign by an amorphous group will be able to understand.

It's mortifying, stressful, and painful. It makes one question one's feelings and ideas about non-violence and peacefulness, and that causes real anguish. And showing any such weakness in public is like chicken-feed for the squawks of the vicious little bastards.

I want revenge. I want justice. I also want a solution — and I do not know how to distinguish between the need for a solution and the desire to hurt somebody. That causes real emotional conflict. Months after I moved away from Kilkenny, my feeling of enmity is not lessened — and in fact it has grown more acute, now that I can think reflectively and without constant low-level stress when I walk outside alone.

[And I say "alone" because the pattern has been remarkably consistent — they're cowards.]

One individual pressed the hardest in his effort to perpetuate the harrassment, and he has kept it up the longest; it's been nearly three years now. I don't know what to do about him, and I wish I could find any kind of an answer.

I want justice and I want revenge. I don't even know how to neatly distinguish between the two. I would also like to find a solution to the problem.

It's possible that this one lad offers the chance to make a change, and to send word of it into the chattering community. This one perverted little bastard may provide a key to the answer.

Just as one lad started the campaign of harrassment, and the others picked up on it when I did not do anything to him, it may be possible that this lad (closely associated with the other, and quick on the uptake back at the beginning) can help me to show others what can happen if the little scumbags really want my attention.

I don't know what to do, and I certainly don't want to break the law in any way that will get myself into trouble and embarrassment. That would be hard to explain. "They're only kids" is the mantra — and I don't want to stand in front of a judge.

But this one kid, he really wants my attention. He has pressed for it. So, maybe I give it to him. I've tried rather studiously to ignore him, to give him the chance to just quit bothering me (after I threatened him.) That has not worked.

He wants my attention. He's always around town — all he does is hang out. Now that I do not live in Kilkenny, and I do not have to worry about the stress of harrassment every time I step outside.... Maybe it's time to give him some of my attention, when I'm in town on visits.

... And persist....

And harrass him.

And tell him the truth about what I think of him.

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