By “I get emails telling me to go and kill myself, to cut myself or to stand in the corner and stop living,” says Jodie.
For the last two years the 27-year-old from Hertfordshire has been plagued by hateful emails, messages on Facebook and prank calls. “They say that my family hate me, my friends don’t like me, that I’m a skank. And that my daughter would be better off without me.”
The hair stylist, who has borderline personality disorder (BPD), says that after a troubled childhood, life was at last going well when the harassment started.
Jodie has self-harmed since she was 11. “I was really low when my mum and dad divorced,” she says.
“I haven’t really got a relationship with my mum. I struggled with that because I have always wanted one and needed her around.
“I never knew my biological father because he and my mum separated when I was only a few months old. When she remarried, her new husband adopted me.”
Jodie’s BPD made it hard for her to deal with what was going on while she was growing up and this continued into adulthood. She explains: “I have trouble handling my emotions and get very overwhelmed by things.
“One minute everything is brilliant and the next I’m really low and I don’t know how to bring myself out of it.
“It’s been going on for years but I was only diagnosed last year. When I was 26 I hit a real low point and was self-harming a lot. That’s when the mental health team got involved.
“I started having dialectical behaviour therapy twice a week, which taught me how to handle my anger. I learnt to take a step back and try and look at things in a different way.”
But things took a turn for the worse when an ex-boyfriend began contacting her new partner Romeo, intent on stirring up trouble. Romeo, 28, had been a huge support to Jodie - and Mark, who had a history of abusive behaviour, became jealous.
She says: “He would make fake Facebook profile pages pretending to be me and take screen grabs of so-called conversations we’d had and send them to Romeo.
“He started turning up at Romeo’s house, harassing him, trying to start fights. And he would hack into his Facebook to flirt with different girls and get him in trouble. He once locked me in his room during an argument.
Mark was placed in a psychiatric unit, but the problems were far from over. Six months later Jodie began to receive anonymous emails. At first there were just a couple in her inbox, then they became more and more frequent. Soon she was getting five or six emails a week and she started receiving prank calls.
Jodie believes the culprit was able to read the emails she’d been sending her boyfriend. “We used to write to each other about anything and everything. I could pour my heart out to him. Over email, it somehow felt safe.
“But I realise now that this is how they got their information,” she says.
“I would get messages from different addresses every time. I changed my address, but somehow they always got hold of it. I’ve changed my phone number over 20 times.”
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How did these deeply intrusive, personal emails make her feel? “Upset, hurt, devastated. I would read nasty comments and think, ‘Yeah, they’re right, what they’re saying is true’. You listen to other people.
“I used to reply and try and explain myself. But that’s what they want. They get off on it. So now I just ignore them, I don’t say anything back.”
Jodie questions her ex-boyfriend’s involvement, saying: “I don’t think it is coming from him directly because he hasn’t got access to the internet, but it could be his friends. It seems like a whole bunch of people have got together and are doing this.
“It’s people who know a lot about me, so it could even be my friends, I have no idea.
“I’ve got so many things I want to say to whoever is doing this. I want to tell them that they’re pathetic and sad, but maybe that’s lowering myself to their level.
“They’re very ignorant about mental health. One email said: ‘"Borderline Personality Disorder” this is the best information we’ve got yet, ha ha. Wot a freak!’.
“I started isolating myself and that is the worst thing you can do, you need to have people around you. But I don’t really trust anyone.
“I contacted the police but they said they can’t trace the email addresses and unless someone is directly threatening me there’s nothing they can do.
“Recently I’ve been getting fewer messages, but they’ve started emailing my partner, saying ‘Why are you with her? She’s a freak’. He ignores it. He has been so supportive.
“If I had any advice to others going through this it would be: Don’t listen to what they’re saying, people can be so cruel. Lean on your family and your friends for support.
“I also want to raise awareness of BPD to help others who have it. There’ a stigma attached to mental health and I want to help get rid of that.”
Jodie is hoping to start up her own hair salon, and says it’s time the internet bullies stop bothering her. “I want them to be caught,” she says. “I don’t ever see this ever stopping, but what they don’t realise is, I’m a survivor. Their name-calling and taunts can’t hurt me forever.”
