A year and a bit ago, which feels like forever, I made a boo-boo on Twitter. I replied to a news article about proposed legislation in Texas, which could see women given a death sentence for having an abortion. I think it was Texas. It’s all a bit of a blur. As soon as I read about this proposal, my irony meter exploded. Like a salivating dog in Pavlov’s study, I replied: “All life is precious … we will kill you.” Because, irony. I was pointing out the irony.

Nobody “liked” my tweet, nobody “retweeted” it, and nobody made a comment. But presumably the algorithm picked it up and permanently suspended the account. This was just as Scott Morrison called the federal election last year, so I had a lot of things I wanted to say in the coming weeks in #Auspol.

I deleted the post, thinking that’s all I had to do. Yeah, nah. It didn’t work.

I lodged an appeal, explaining that I was using irony. I was not making a threat to kill a politician or anybody else, obviously. I’m a nice person! I’m an author of hilarious and sweet teen romance novels with a talking ferret. I’m a delight!

I put the word out on Facebook, asking friends who were also on Twitter to help me out. Lots of friends did make comments on the platform with messages along the line of “this must be some awful mistake”.

“Just lodge an appeal,” people suggested. I had. Meanwhile, my friends also laughed at me when I told them of my predicament. “You? banned? What did you do?”

“I think I accidentally threatened to kill a politician? I’m not sure.”

Anyway, I received a boilerplate reply that didn’t even use my name.

“Hello,
After investigating your appeal, we have determined that your account posted content that was threatening and/or promoting violence in violation of the Twitter Terms of Service. Accordingly, your account has been suspended and will not be restored.
You can learn more about suspended accounts here 
Thanks,
Twitter”

It’s not that I’m banned – I’m merely permanently suspended. I can still see what’s on Twitter and be disturbed and sickened by the constant flow of terrible news. I can still “sit in the sewer”, so to speak – I simply can’t contribute to it.

I appealed again, same result. More advice from friends, including “just open a new account”. Didn’t work, they’d blocked my ISP. “Just get a burner phone with a new number” does feel a little desperate. And a touch Breaking Bad, really. And I was getting tired of people using “just” when this felt completely unjust.

Each time I lodged an appeal, I received the same reply. Reading it in Inigo Montoya’s voice (from The Princess Bride) took some of the sting out.

There was a little pain in not being able to join in ebbs and flows. I used to love contributing to #LesserBooks or simultaneously watching movies with people anywhere in the world. It was fun! I got to meet people from all over the world, in all kinds of situations, and get a feel for how people really live. I also watched the growth of the botfarms, the swarms of misinformation pouring in to bolster disreputable garbage. Anti-vaxxers, I’m looking at you.

I have appealed multiple times, trying different things. I noticed after Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet they slapped a bespoke curtain over the comment, as a way of saying they didn’t endorse what was behind it, but they were unable to stop it. I mean, they could permanently suspend his account, if they wanted to?

Many users repeated this same phrase, but used quote marks to show that the speech was not theirs. If I’d done this initially, perhaps I could have ducked the swinging axe. But Twitter has never had any edit function, and that in itself is a huge problem.

I do keep lodging appeals every month or so, with the same response no matter what. Ultimately, I’ve emerged through the stages of grief (denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression etc) and come to the acceptance that Twitter is a private entity. They make the rules and enforce them as they see fit. I was playing in their sandpit. I did breach their terms – unintentionally – and they kicked me off.

Which may be for the best, really. I am getting more things done and being productive. I miss all the friends I made on the platform, but I don’t miss the conveyor belt of pain that also flowed into my brain, like gloopy chocolates on that overused gif of Lucille Ball. There is only so much shared pain a person can digest before it’s going to spew out. This is probably why I ended up making such a poorly-constructed comment that saw me booted off. The anger and bile that washed over me as I read through Twitter ended up coming out of my fingertips.

And who knows? The account is still there, @EbonyMcKenna. If I ever get it back, what’s to say I won’t fall foul of the algorithm again? A platform that doesn’t allow editing sure does punish you for an offhand remark.

• Ebony McKenna is a young adult author in Melbourne who really appreciates the editing function on Facebook