Flea has a really great post up, talking about bullies, in reference to both her own childhood and her kids. It's something I've given a lot of thought to, having both been a bully and been bullied for so much of my life. The sad conclusion I've come to most recently is that it never stops (looks like some of Flea's commenters agree). Sure, as adults we get a bit more sophisticated in our bullying, and we call it other things, but it's still bullying. The tactics are the same: ostracism, humiliation, the intentional denigration of someone else's self worth in order to bolster your own. The effect is the same, too: feeling humiliated, assy self worth, extreme sadness. In all honesty, I don't feel any more equipped to deal with bullying now, at 25, than I did at 15, or at 10, or at 5. Sorry kids--it doesn't get any easier.
Maybe it should, though. As a kid, your circle of friends is defined by a lot of forces that are completely outside your control--your neighborhood, your class in school, whatever. As an adult, you have the freedom to move through different circles. As Flea so eloquently points out in her entry, she just wanted to play. And I think that's one of the reasons a lot of people--adult and child alike--put up with bullying. We just want to play. We want to have friends, have things to do, be part of things. As a child, our opportunities for that are limited. As an adult, they are far less so. If we are bullied in one circle, we can find another circle. If we are treated poorly by one friend, we can end that relationship and find another friend. Only in our families and our workplaces are we forced to interact with people who treat us poorly, and even there "forced" is too strong a word. If we don't like how we are being treated, we can change it.
Why is that such a hard lesson to learn and such a difficult thing to do? While I have some pretty unpleasant memories of childhood bullying, if I'm honest, the most hurtful episodes are from high school and beyond. And they are almost always repeated instances with the same people treating me badly over and over again. The reasons I've allowed this to happen over and over again perplex me even now, but I know that my own low self-worth, my thinking that maybe I deserve it, is only part of the equation. Another part, a part that is talked about even less, is that I put up with it because I wanted to play. I didn't want to be left out, I didn't want to admit defeat and go inside. And while that makes sense as a kid, sad as it is, it just doesn't make sense as an adult. There is no shame in being left out of a group that treats you poorly, and it is better to be alone (or better yet, to find new friends) than it is to remain in the company of someone who makes you feel like shit about yourself.