Hi everyone.  This is Acadia from superficialgallery.com and I am writing this as a favor to my wonderful friend, Julie.  As someone who chooses to not reveal anything about myself on the Internet, the fact that Julie has been so incredibly honest and forthcoming has always and will always baffle me.  She is incredibly honest and like anything else, the more true something is the funnier/more poignant/more effective something is.  People have built in bullshit detectors and while Julie might be lots of complicated things, dishonest is not one of them.

But all of that honesty takes a toll.  The birthing process is always painful, and given the depth and breadth of the trauma Julie has undergone over the past year (all of which she shared here publicly), I am sure that you can understand that she’s kind of tired.  Add to that the fact that the site is costing her more money than it makes.  Then imagine what it would be like to be scared to look at your own pending comments because you are getting trolled by your own mom.  This has been going on for months, and yet she has kept writing until now.

So what’s different now?  Practical things.  The site(s) are bleeding money she doesn’t have.  Her health is for crap and what was previously a source of fulfillment and pride has become a looming wave of stress that she, to be honest, does not need to deal with.  I cannot imagine what it must be like to feel so crappy and still be able to make visitors feel welcome, make casual readers smile and make her useless failure of a mother feel like she had some sort of power by allowing her to leave the shitty comments that she left.  Julie and I spoke about just making it so her mom could not comment at all (would not have been difficult) but Julie said it would be better to let her think she was being effective that way rather than hurt more people by finding another medium.  Grownups should not have to make those kind of decisions but Julie did.

And she knows that not all of the decisions she made were good.  People were hurt by things she said and how she said them and where she said them.  People who deserved to have things related to them in a personal, respectful manner were informed instead in ways that could only be described as horrifically insensitive and completely inappropriate.  Things like that happen when people trick themselves into thinking that being selfish is a virtue.  Julie is no longer tricking herself and will fix the mess she made offline (where it should have been handled anyway).

Now, before you all go thinking that I somehow hacked Julie up, stole her site and have her hidden in one of her beloved stalker vans, I assure you that she is alive and well and you can find her on Facebook.  She is having seizures and needs to fix her finances and needs to get all of the things in real life worked out before she can think about coming back to the site.  And if she does come back to the site, she will need to decide where internet stops and real life starts.  Trying to make them one thing is too hard and it chewed her up.

So like they say…if you love something, umm, I guess go find it on Facebook?  I don’t know.  It’s not like this is a eulogy.  It’s just that the site is going dark.  So go away…go on!

Sorry folks.  Blog’s closed.  Moose out front should’ve told you.

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