60- on bullying

Mental Health week 2016 is over, but the month isn't, and thus mental health awareness must go on. I now come to discuss a topic I haven't shared yet : bullying.

As a teen in school, I was both victimised and in turn bullied others for a short period of my life, acts for which I'm not proud having done and for which I unfortunately cannot ask forgiveness directly to those I've hurt because I live in a different country and forgot the names of my fellow classmates in what feels like a whole other lifetime.

Some children are cruel and they'll find anything they can to berate, make fun of anyone they want, and hurt both verbally and physically those they are afraid of because of their differences.
Others will bully for a whole wide range of factors outside of an underdeveloped compassion or an innate sociopath's behaviour.



Let me start with the beginning, because otherwise you won't understand how a non violent me can become violent and bully others after being bullied myself.

Here's the first thing you need to know, and to which I alluded in other posts : as a child, I was kidnapped by my father, from my mother. This initial trauma create a schism in me as I felt dead and suffered from numerous depressive episodes as a result and also from post traumatic stress syndrome, exacerbated by the fact the trauma continued for many years and worsened by much abuse, a subject I leave for details elsewhere.

At home, I had repetitive examples of domestic violence between my father and his new wife who were fighting, screaming and throwing objects at one another very frequently and over many topics of discord.

At the first schools, kids would bully me for my inadequacies, my intellectual pursuits didn't please them and they'd berate me for choosing books over them.

Another time, my best friend at one other school also turned on me and in a spur of the moment, I snapped and hurt his chin, which caused the principle to throw me out of this school right in the middle of third grade, and also after I was also accused by a step brother (not exactly step brother per say), for stealing at the local supermarket and I was the one punished when it should've been him...

After that, we had to find a school that would accept me so far into the year, and there, I reached my teen years. I was forbidden to approach girls at this school or outside of it, by my crazy fanatic father who warned me that he'd kill me with his bare hands if he ever learned that I dared to contravene his express orders, and it is with this Damocles sword threatening to fall on my head and cut my life short that I had my first teenager's crushes on some girls at school, girls which I couldn't talk to because I was so afraid for my life that it would give me severe migraine to even walk towards them.

My fellow classmates noticed my infatuations and would bully me by singing that I was in love with these girls, making fun of my feelings as well as my other odd aspects : I was still shy at this new school, preferring reading books or bird watching instead of joining them in their sports during our breaks.

The truth, as the expression goes, does hurt : I was hurt that the kids could see clearly that I had those crushes and the frustration caused by my inability to do anything about it and actually go and talk to the girls I was interested in, created a huge stress and since the only examples I had at home were the domestic violence scenes, I became in turn violent and would explode in huge fits of rage, throwing chairs and tables at everyone and once I even punched someone in the belly and that's when I realised that I was wrong in spite of everything and decided to warn everyone when I'd feel this rage mounting...

It was too late, off course, as I had already bullied. But, I learned a lot about myself at that moment and it was a turning point in my life and I stopped hurting back those who continued to hurt me afterwords. 

I can now name what I couldn't back then (as I was only a child). My non violent nature had been overridden by cognitive dissonance and the situation with its many factors. 

After I'd realised my wrong actions, I embraced the non violent and ahimsa principles and ever since, in spite of angry moments would practise self control to avoid bullying again.

The domestic violence never totally stopped at home, but I witnessed it less because I moved out to live with the nuts who followed my father as the second coming... but that's for another post.

Have in mind that I'm not the only one to bully and also not the only one to be bullied. Far too many children were bullied for a number of ''reasons'' their colour, their weight, their gender or any appearance and in turn, this bullying creates a lot of hurt feelings and many suffer from mental illnesses such as social anxieties and phobias, OCD, haven't developed self confidence and feel like losers, un-pretty or ugly, and it's about time to call bullying what it is : bullshit that we need to learn not to listen to, and move far far away, emotionally speaking, from those who hurt us.

When someone bullies, it's not about you, and your ''defects'' but about the defects of the person who doesn't understand you, is afraid of you or is envious of you.

And it's possible to have bullied and not meant it, and outgrow it, like I have.

Since I cannot ask those I've hurt for forgiveness, I bring awareness about this topic and try to be the best person that I can and help others instead.

Thank you for listening.