An open letter to the people who bullied me

Kathy_Bramley

I don't know if it's lucky or not that I grew up before social media. I had eczema and nasal catarrh, possibly a slight hearing impairment, and was emotionally disregulated, clumsy, eccentric and quixotic, a spiky profile, cognitively, as per dyspraxia and autism, in my head a lot/dissociative, moved funny but didn't have CP,  assessed a lot but not quite diagnosed. And queer in other ways too. I was deliberately betrayed and systematically wound up to meltdown in elaborate schemes devised by "peers" - the kids in my village mostly but also socially aggressive bullying at high school on a regular basis. I was daily called m*ng, sp*z, people did that thing Trump did at journalist Serge Kovawlski and there was a week a small gang of kids found and followed me every break, calling me zombie. If I ever succeeded at sports, which physically and emotionally I needed and was one of two girls who did elective PE when we got to that stage, someone would throw a tantrum. Balls taken home because I won a tackle, legs whacked with hockey sticks. Pathetic really. 

But I know that all of them must have had other stuff going on. And that I wasn't morally perfect. And that that doesn't justify any of it.

But there's no such thing as throwing people away. We all matter to someone. Every suicide makes a ripple, every murder. Every death. Every life. Somehow. Thinking about this has been important. 

Nowadays I eat trolls for breakfast. Or at least put my quixotry to good use in epic conversations that often win people over.

Just because lightning strikes it doesn't make you deserving, it's just physics. Just because some group dynamic treats you like a thorn in the flesh it doesn't make it the whole truth forever or for you. Even if it has some truth for them. Being stronger than that is a quest in its own right.

My political anger and politicisation helped me. 

But the flipside especially in a school with many politically aware teachers who weren't sure how to help was an inspiration porn thing, transference, projection. I was told to go off and save the world anyway. Encouraged to want to be prime minister, to show them.
I have much more sympathy with our leaders than politically I should do. And I see an inspiration porn and evolutionary psychology of phenomena in their selection: special roles for special people, priests and magicians and heroes.
It's all very triggering anyway. I want a world without terms used to abuse. Really hard when my kids pick it up and use it against each other or me. And they're disabled too.   

And the lefty friendly teachers and peers would use words like eccentric and quirky and say I was just me and that came over as devastating passive aggressive euphemism.

I feel like I can trust nobody. Like I'm a big bag of doodoo but also special at the same time. And have an epic story a lot less priveleged than our current leaders. It's an odd place to be. But I think learning to tell the story well is one way to survive.. 


 

Grumpy1954

redchicken43 said:

Have you ever asked him why he is doing this?? Just seems crazy that people should be so cruel?

If you mean my brother in law, not recently, I just get abuse back. . He seems to have an intense hatred for several things about me, I've been happily married to his sister for 20+ years while he cannot keep a relationship going, I'm content with my life and what I have, he never has been, always thought he "deserved" more. I served in the Armed Forces for 12 yrs, 6 as an NcO, he has no connection with the military but claims it. He seemed to think, whatever car I had, he had to get a better one, not realising I didn't care - oh, and when I had my military pension, he pleaded poverty and had hundreds, if not thousands of pounds "loans" that he never attempted to pay back. My hobby was restoring unloved classic cars, he asked me for one as a gift, I gave him an early Toyota Supra (his choice) he ragged it round the area showing off, then dumped it in someone's front garden with no fuel, a dead battery and 4 flat tyres and told them to contact me to get it moved. I have no real idea why.

redchicken43

I think this all says more about him then you. Seems that you have made something of your life and views you with resentment. You should feel proud of yourself having overcome adversity as for him, well it maybe that he is a lost cause.

Kathy_Bramley

None of it is about us. The potential for ableism sits in context, social attitudes. And maybe an unhealthy sense of ownership or competitive attachment to his sister.  It sounds like insecurity about status and maybe his own sanity or fitness have  morphed into a grotesque and bitter campaign. Some kind of schema, or set of schema, about his own performance that throws him into the mode of an angry child, fighting the idea of disablity as just equal part of the human condition, being overly consumed with the idea it's all about heirarchy, pecking order. As if he feels degraded. It's irrational. But then these things are. 

You have no duty to fix or help him and you both or society yourself. But it would be good if someone did.

There's a dehumanisation of disablity. That we degrade and threaten them, that they don't have to worry about how we feel. Sometimes also there's just a cause and effect toy thing going on, that they work out they can push buttons and so they do. It's rewarding because it's scary but they get to carry on feeling superior. 

 Lightening strikes are just physics, no matter how tempted people are to think last night's storm was about Boris Johnson and my paranoid brain has made a variety of self centered/anxious postulations. 

Latterly one of my not so bad bullies admitted that they were as the village mob deliberately finding ways to wind me up and apologized. This was a huge relief in terms of confirming that it actually did happen. And I didn't have a strong sense of being rightfully able to say "well this was just disablity hate/bullying" even if it was how I tended to think about it. So anyway, this being the long postulated moment, responded with practiced magnanimity. Didn't mention disablity. Although I did note he was one of the other people who was easily wound up. And feel wrong about that since. But I did give my "loh well, lighetning  finds somewhere to strike, I know I could be annoying and confusing, we were just kids" spiel.

He then did a complete U-turn as if I'd given him permission, and started to gleefully reminisce about glory days and how much fun it was, though admittedly not for me, he added. OMG. Lawdy. 

I still don't think we should give up on the ableds, but blimey, cautionary tale! No surrender!!