Earlier this week I finally realized what it was that drove me nuts about all these YouTube videos proclaiming that life gets better for the victims of bullies - they're not true. It doesn't get any better. Or, at least, it might not get better for you.
Most of the reason that this is true is because people tend to fall into one of two categories throughout most of their lives - Us and Them. Depending on whether you're an Us or a Them at any particular point in your personal journey is the determining factor of whether you'll be bullied. Us's like people that belong to their category and are generally intolerant of Them's. Them's can't figure out why the Us's hate them and wouldn't know how to change to become an Us even if it were possible. Us's bully Them's. As pretty much everyone in their life goes through a Them cycle, you probably know what bullying is all about. But as you discover that you don't like being one of Them, you join Us, and the bullying stops. But not everyone joins Us. Some people remain Them no matter what. For Them, there is no end to the bullying they endure.
I have almost always been one of Them - you know, the weird kid that marches to his own set of drums. I remember in Kindergarten quickly surmising that I was pretty darn smart. I was easily ahead of the rest of the class on the learning curve - so much so that I pulled back, lest I get too far ahead. I enjoyed having friends and being the smart kid meant that I didn't have friends. But there wasn't a whole lot that I couldn't figure out on my own.
Throughout grade school I was able to associate with the smart kids in school. But unlike them, I didn't excel in my education. In turning away from education and learning as a goal in and of itself, my mind found the world of fantasy and make-believe to play around in. I often tell of the creation of my first story. We were supposed to write a paragraph about Halloween. I spent four hours and wrote ten pages. I had to be forced outside to join the rest of the kids in the Halloween parade, and I asked to take the story home so that I could finish it.
I loved to spend time in that fantasy world battling aliens and monsters, ghosts, spies, etc... But, as you can imagine, this made me the weird kid. I was aware of other kids at the school, but after third grade when all of my friends moved on to private schools, I was stuck in a classroom with nothing to interest me and no friends to keep me grounded in what was cool. I went off on tangents and became less and less connected to education and the things that all other grade school kids were interested in.
I wasn't quite bullied yet, unless you count loneliness as a form of bullying. I had "friends" but I didn't really have anyone to talk to. They were all going off into things like cars or girls or comics and I was lost in my fantasy world. I began to run not only as a form of exercise but also because it was the one sport I could do where I got to spend all of this time just thinking up things.
Of course, that all changed when I got to Jr. High... but that's up for discussion next time.
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