I would like to share a portion of a post made by a dear Twitter Friend, @MissShuganah A.K.A. Debbie.
Unbeknown to us, she had been bullied as a child. Her story is is so insightful, so heartbreaking and so encouraging and all at the same time.
Things are not always as they seem. Whether you are the parent of a bullied child or a bully, there some very important lessons to be learned from her words.
I am a bullying survivor.
All throughout grammar school, I was either teased or bullied. When kids are taunted because, like me, they have “Pick on me, I am sensitive,” emblazoned on their foreheads, is there much difference? Either way a child is meant to feel as if they are not as good as everyone else. Kids know innately when someone is sensitive and vulnerable. I don’t need to read “Lord of the Flies.” When you are a sensitive kid wishing, hoping, praying that other kids will like you, that is your life. And when, like me, you don’t have any real refuge at home, you wish you were dead. Eleven year olds should not be wanting to kill themselves. But they do. And some succeed. Or rather, they fail to grasp that there are benefits to staying alive. They fail to see that suicide is, as some glibly put it, a permanent solution to a temporary situation. The pain feels permanent.
When I was eleven, we moved from Chicago’s Southeast side to the suburbs. I thought, new town, new school, I’d have a respite from the bullies. Start over. I was hanging up my jacket on the first day of school when I saw a face I hadn’t seen in several years. It was a bully who had moved away three years earlier. He recognized me straight away. “Miller, you are gonna get it!” He made sure that the other kids knew who I was. His best friend was in a nearby classroom. And the best friend’s cousin was in my classroom. I had also left behind the mean girls, only to find myself besieged by another set of mean girls.
My desire to end it all was childish, yet my pain was very real. I imagined my funeral. People were gonna stand around at graveside and wish they had been kinder to me. I suppose that, in the case of suicides, the more realistic scenario is that survivors are angry with the person for giving up. No doubt there is some guilt thrown in for good measure.
On Columbus Day 1969 I went down to the kitchen. Instead of joining my folks at the breakfast table, I opened up the knife drawer and started testing knives for sharpness by placing my finger tip against the edge of each one. My dad sat there frozen, but my mom asked me what I was doing. I told her. She got up from the kitchen table and had me close the drawer.
I followed her upstairs to my bedroom, and we sat on the bed and talked. She talked to me about how suicide is against God’s law. I don’t know if that argument would have worked on me if I had all ready been an atheist. All that matters is that it worked then. Mainly I think I realized how hurtful my actions could have been.I still remember the stricken look on my dad’s face as he sat there at the table. Even without my mom saying a word to me, I think I knew how much pain I would have caused him. In my self pity, I had not considered how my actions would affect others. Just that I wanted them to be sorry.
No one had taught me how to fend off bullies. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not my older brothers. Not any teachers. Not any friends. It took me years to figure it out. When a person asserts oneself, they are standing their ground….I was clearly angry. I did not yell. I did not scream. It was a tense few minutes, but very little drama. That is how we stop bullies. We assert a quiet authority.
I think her description of how bullies can be stopped when the bullied child “asserts a quiet authority” is absolutely brilliant. Parents, teachers and all adults please don’t ignore the obvious.
Photo: thelastminute
