What is bullying anyway? The Webster dictionary formally defines it as a person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people. This is an over-simplified and dated definition if I may say. Wikipedia (yes, the go to place for getting recon on famous people and other mundane things) defines bullying much more detailed and contemporary. It says, Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or isolate to impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power. Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, isolation, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Justifications and rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of class, race, religion, gender, sexuality, appearance, behavior, or ability. If bullying is done by a group, it is called mobbing.
I was most
certainly a target of mobbing more than once, and bullying was commonplace for
me during fourth and fifth grade. As I
moved to middle school, the bullying actually became more sporadic. I think this might be because several
elementary schools dumped into my middle school and suddenly, there were more
people in my grade. I was able to hide
among the masses much better. The
bullies were able to find other things to focus on and probably, other victims
to harass, hate, and isolate. But I was
still bullied and made fun of all the way through my junior year of high
school. But by then, I was becoming less
and less upset by it and I was beginning to grow protective armor.
Even as an
adult, I still feel bullied sometimes. I
am particularly sensitive to it. It
happens to friends, I see it in my Jewish community, and sometimes it happens
to me. But I don’t take it anymore. I fight back.
Now, it hasn’t always worked out well for me to fight back against it. Sometimes the bully is so shocked that I have
had the audacity to deflect their words back at them, they figuratively throw their
hands up in the air pretending to be the victim. They have no idea how to deal with it because
they’re used to just being an asshole to others and getting away with it.
To me,
bullies are a baby form of a sociopath.
Sociopaths are, to put it very simply, people who feel no remorse for
terrible behavior and no empathy for other’s suffering. In order to do that, you have to be
incredibly selfish and self-absorbed. To
not think about how saying something to someone like “you are so ugly, you should
just die” makes them feel, is an incredibly selfish thing. To not try it on yourself first so see how it
fits and feels before making someone else wear it, well that’s the heart of the
problem. Bullies don’t stop and think
once how it would feel if it were done to them.
And they rarely notice what they’re doing is even wrong. Many bullies aren't going to notice 20 years later
that they were vile to their victim and atone for it. That just doesn’t cross a bully’s mind.
Now, I’m not
saying once a bully always a bully. I truly
believe many grow up and become decent and loving citizens. But I believe some never change. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in grade
school or high school. I still have
incidents where I feel bullied by an acquaintance, a family member, or an
in-law. I realize everyone probably feels
this way at different points of their lives, like they’re still in grade school. It’s hard for me to see, when someone does
something rather cruel to me, that it’s just mean adult behavior, and not
bullying like when I was little. It’s
hard to separate those two feelings out from each other.
The most
recent event that comes to mind, where I felt picked on and had to separate out
my brain’s memory of the past from current life, was just a few weeks ago. I attended my friend’s daughter’s wedding and
I was delighted to be there on such a happy occasion for the family. I was having a fine time until during the cocktail
hour when a friend of the bride’s mom saw me waiting at the bar for a glass of
wine and approached me. I’ve met her
before so I said “hi, how are you doing.”
She answered with the obligatory “good.”
Then she said to me the strangest thing – “Were you in the wedding?” Now, she is a very good friend of the family
and she knew who was in the bridal party.
I said “Of course I wasn’t in the wedding.” She said “Well you look like it with that
dress you have on.” I asked her what she
meant by that. She said “Well, the bride’s
maid’s dresses are purple, as you know, and your dress looks an awful lot like
the color purple.” I was wearing a royal blue dress, nothing remotely close to purple. And, I was wearing red shoes. I think that’s what pissed her off so much,
that I dared to wear red shoes. I said
to her “I don’t know how well you are seeing in this light, but I am wearing a
blue dress and it is not purple.” This
woman said, if you can believe it “Well, it looks purple in certain light and
you just shouldn’t have ever considered wearing that color.” I looked at her, gave her the most confused,
yet disgusted look, took the wine the catering staff handed me and walked away
from that nasty woman.
As I walked
away, I suddenly felt really sad and attacked.
At first, when she was doing it, I just thought she was insane and
crude. But a few minutes later, I felt
attacked, singled out, and quite simply, bullied. I looked around and counted four female
guests, not in the wedding, wearing purple dresses, but she wasn’t approaching
them and admonishing them. Why did she
single me out? That’s what brought back
the raw feelings of bullying for me. The
feeling of being the only one, the only one targeted, the one who was
isolated. In some ways, this woman’s
behavior ruined the rest of the evening for me.
I just wanted to leave. Perhaps
my friend, the mother of the bride, was mad at me too, thinking my dress was
too close to purple. And I had even went
out of my way when buying a dress for the event, to not try on any dresses that
were plum or purple, because I knew the bride’s colors were purple and orange
and I would never want to take away from that.
I realized
the next day that I had done something at the wedding I don’t do much anymore,
I gave that nasty woman all my power and emotional energy. I let her ruin the rest of MY evening at the
wedding. I gave her the power to allow
myself to feel stupid and unwanted. She
was an idiot, not me. But I was acting
foolish by letting her get to me and get inside my head. When I walked away from her, I should have
thrown her insults away too. But I let
them get to me. That’s my fault. People who act like this asshole woman don’t
deserve our energy. And this is the
difference between adult bullying and childhood bullying. When you grow up, you have to ignore bullying
and not let it get to you. Yes, you
stand up for yourself, walk away, and move on immediately. But that’s not how it should work for
children. They are simply too little,
too fragile, and not abstract thinking enough to be told to just ignore
it. They must be defended, listened to,
protected, and supported.
However, that still doesn’t seem to be happening currently, even after countless tweens and teenagers have taken their own lives directly due to mobbing and bullying. And the incidents of bullying seem to be on the rise due to social media websites, where bullies thrive on anonymity and cowardice hiding behind their computer. These mini sociopaths deserve a public verbal flogging and some swift punishment from their parents, but unfortunately, many of these little bullies are the progeny of big bullies who often defend their child’s disgusting behavior.
I would love to name each and every person who bullied me as a child, but I won’t do that. After all, I am even facebook friends with some of them. The reality is, I’m not angry at them anymore. I still have pain, but I have grown up, moved on, blossomed, and forgiven them entirely. None of them have ever asked me for forgiveness personally. A few have expressed remorse, but none have ever said specifically that they are sorry for what they did to me. But it’s ok, I don’t need them to. I’ve forgiven them, for me. It’s not for them. It’s for me. It’s what’s best for me to be happy and thrive. And that’s exactly what I deserve, to thrive. After all the bull shit I’ve been through, I’m damn proud to say, I’m thriving, against all odds.
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