Bullying

I'm torn by this recent increase in bullying and suicides by teens in America. I'm torn because I don't think it is actually an increase in the acts themselves, just higher profile acts that are making it to the national media. I'm also torn because I don't understand the thought processes that lead to the bullied committing suicide.

I was bullied throughout my formative years. In grade school and into junior high school, I was a small kid. I wore a lot of blue. I was teased and picked on and called a "Smurf", "Smurfette", and, as my peers and I were starting to discover curse words, worse names. I hated it, but it taught me to be quick witted with comebacks and quicker still with my feet -- I could outrun nearly everybody at that age.

In junior high the bullying got more physical at times. I had a few people who liked to physically push and shove and others who threatened me with harm. Hell, even after I had one summer where I grew a number of inches, I wound up with my formerly short friends upset I wasn't part of their crowd, so they used their "Napoleon complexes" to pick on me for having grown, but I still wasn't tall so many of my taller peers continued to assault me for being still so short! In junior high, I started to see and learn that the teachers and other adults in my life also could be bullies, although I think most of them didn't realize it. Gym teachers who didn't think I was trying hard enough would make me try to do more in front of a class full of students who resented that my ineffectual actions were slowing down them getting to play time. Teachers who parade an obviously scared, crying child in front of the classroom and continue berating them for all the class to see and hear. However, rather than plotting their deaths or my own, I got smarter, wilier, more devious. I figured out ways around those teachers. Hell, one teacher in junior high who pissed me off one too many times I battled with verbally until he went to the little closet office he had attached to his classroom and cried. I learned to fight back.

In high school, the bullying became much more physical. Constant targeting by bigger, tougher students when I was a Freshman and Sophomore. Again, my quick feet and quick wits helped me out of most of those situations, and I tended to find something on them that I could get to an authority figure surreptitiously so they had to deal with their own issues.

And, frankly, the bullying over the years made me into a bully. I was more subtle than many in my bullying, but I teased, cajoled, whispered, and wheedled until I made those around me crack. I got good at manipulating those around me, students and teachers alike.

But all during these times, even when I couldn't avoid it and got into physical fights, I never once thought about suicide. One of my life's mottoes from a very earlier age has always been "as long as there is life, there is hope." And it is true. If you are bullied in grade school, it will end when you grow, or become quick witted, or find your strength, or when you go to junior high and away from one, some, or all of your bullies. Same with junior high and high school.

Life is constant change, especially at young ages. From childhood through college, it is almost constant change. Knowing that, why would you think that ending life (your own or someone else's) is a viable solution? Instead, just actively seek out change or simply wait for the next change to come about and suddenly everything around you is different.

I can't speak directly about the homosexual angle to many of the recent bullying stories. Although some of the bullying that I had to put up with came from those who accused or insinuated I was gay, I was always very comfortable in my skin and with my sexuality (even when it was budding) so I never took those threats or taunts too seriously. In most cases, that was just one of many tactics the bullies had used to get my goat and under my skin. For those for whom the sexual-orientation taunts are true, I guess they haven't developed a comfort with their sexuality due to how homosexuality is viewed in general in America. So it makes it harder for them to ignore those taunts.

In the end, I wind up torn on the issue: while I agree that bullying is a serious issue and we should strive to eliminate as much of it as we can, my opinion is that bullying is something that everyone must overcome. In many cases, overcoming bullying makes people who and what they are as adults. Without bullying, many of our best athletes, most entertaining musicians and actors, and many of our leaders wouldn't exist -- it is through overcoming their bullying that they learned they had a facility for comedy, a passion for the arts, or became great athletes and leaders. Pressure can turn carbon into diamond, but it can also crack and break that diamond if too much is applied, or the pressure comes from the wrong angle. Without that pressure, many people may not find their gifts and their niche in the world. But too much pressure can obvious crack a mind and spirit and cause someone to either kill themselves or those around them. It is a balance and I simply don't have a solution for it.