INTERNET BULLYING

Internet Bullying

I want respect. Not a whole lot, and not more than I deserve. By respect, all I really mean is that I want sometimes for someone to listen to me and say, "that's a good point." That would be enough. Just "that's a good point" every now and then. I need that kind of validation; everyone does. They say you can't create in a vacuum. You can't think in one either.

I want to speak my mind and realize I've been heard. I like when I speak, and someone reiterates what I've said. It tells me what I said didn't go into the ether to die there. Sound waves spread from the point at which they are created, and as distance increases, the effect of those waves decreases. That means that the closer someone is, the greater the chance that they will hear you. If the people around you aren't listening, you can't really expect those far, far away to hear a peep.

I want the chance to be creative. I want to believe in myself. I want someone else to believe in me. I'm tired to death of being told I should be doing something - this or that ridiculous, inappropriate thing - with my life. I'm tired of the kind of transparent manipulation offered by the narrow-minded people who think they know what's best for everyone else. No one knows what's best for me. No one's really asked. How can you know something if you make no effort to find out?

I want the kind of security that comes from knowing that I can count on someone else to hear me out and not lash back at me out of their own fear or jealousy. I've had enough through my life of people who've deliberately taken all my strengths and turned them into weaknesses. I have had my fill of people who've told me that my intelligence is not going to get me a husband, that if I stand straight, it's only because I am too arrogant, that if I do something well, I make other people look bad.

I hate bullies. I hate those who are deliberately cruel. I don't care why they are bullies. I don't care about their fears or their insecurities. Bad behavior is bad behavior. I have no patience for people who take their problems out on those who are weaker than them. If I have socialist tendencies at all, that's where they come from.

I want to be seen, for who I am and not for what people project onto me. Not everyone has to do that, but I want one person to see me. I want one person to validate the unique single spark that is my life on this earth.

Am I asking for too much? Really? I want enough love to feel human. I want enough respect to feel valuable. And I want to do something I care about to have some satisfaction at the end of the day.

Am I asking too much?

So where did this come from? Where did I develop this sudden desire to state what I want out of life?

Internet bullying.

Yep. I heard a piece on the news today about how teachers are trying to crack down on kids who bully other kids by posting their opinions on websites like Facebook.

Overlook for a moment the fact that anyone who would post anything insulting on the INTERNET and believe it's private is an intellectual midget. I'm not trying to be insulting. It's just -- I mean, really. You'd be better off paying to have your libel up in lights on the scoreboard at a Yankees game during the World Series. Your potential audience would be a lot smaller.

Overlook that teachers are demonstrably not particularly adept generally at either identifying children preying on other children. My own experience at school led me to believe that the bullies, more apparently confident and often greater attention seekers than their victims, tended to be praised by authority figures.

Overlook that kids, like everyone else, need the chance to talk out their feelings and blow off steam.

But it really got me thinking about what I lacked in my own childhood.

I never had a steady influence on me that was positive and encouraging. I had no teacher who took extra time with me. I had no great mentor who made a year or sports season or even a DAY the best of my life, a benchmark I could measure other experiences again.

I had no one who took an interest and let me know I was special.

I was not bullied in a physically aggressive manner. I was not beaten at home or abused by a relative.

In short, when I was told I had everything I could possibly want, and nothing at all to complain about, I could only feel ungrateful for being so unhappy.

But I didn't have those things I list above. I didn't have any voices in my life that told me I was special, or that I was unique, or that I could succeed anything, much less achieve something wonderful with my life. I didn't have the kind of love that was offered without reservations.

Love, to me, was something that came doled out when I did something I didn't want to do. When I was holding back my own inclinations. When I was pretending I was something I was not.

Or it was something that was supposed to be secret -- that was offered on the condition that I didn't speak of it in public. I had friends who would only hang out with me when no one else would see us together.

I allowed myself to become invisible. I don't know if I was invisible to others, but I certainly have become invisible to myself. I stopped believing I could have any effect on anyone around me. I gave my love freely. I gave my support to everyone I could. But I ceased to believe I would ever feel loved or supported in return.

For the first few years, I believed that if I told others I respected their talents, that I saw them and that I believed in them, that they would reciprocate.

Instead, I learned to be the kind of person that everyone uses without even thinking about it.

I was everyone's chauffeur, everyone's secretary. I was everyone's favorite clerk, and everyone's babysitter. People knew I would always say yes.

Well, no more.

That didn't get me respect. You can see, I'm sure, how it wouldn't. You don't receive respect by being a doormat.

Yes, I think the kids who are bullied on the Internet or everywhere else should stand up for themselves. Yes, I think that conflict and obstacles can build character.

But I also know that you can't get through those obstacles alone. And the kids who are bullied, or the kids who just lack support in their life, they are the ones who need someone in their corner the most. Just hearing that anyone is willing to say it's not nice to bully can do a lot to help someone understand that it's better to stand up for yourself.

I learned, from my childhood experiences, that when you have no one in your corner, the only thing you can understand is that you don't matter.

I've spent a lot of my life believing that I don't matter.

I've spent most of it believing that.

Kids can be cruel to each other, but the reason we have schools, and families, is so that the older generation can teach the younger a sense of something greater than them. Without role models, without any kind of lessons being passed on about nice and nasty, respect and rude, well, we might as well just kill and eat each other. Because without those things, life is not worth living. Without those things, we are not civilized. We are not human.

That's why I react strongly when I hear people defending kids who bully each other on the Internet or anywhere else because they have a right to freedom of speech. We have freedom, but if those freedoms are not tempered by an acknowledgment of our responsibilities to each other, they are not freedoms at all.

They are weapons.

If you are a kid and you say cruel things to others, you can be forgiven to some extent. You are a child. I don't buy that you don't know better. The truth is, as a child you will do whatever makes you feel better about yourself, and you will do it without regard for the effect you have on others if there are no consequences to your actions.

But the teachers who stand back and do nothing, the parents who see behavior like this and don't do anything, they are making the world a worse place by not living up to their own responsibilities.

It's the responsibility of teachers and parents to take away the weapons kids use on each other, or at the very least to explain that's what they are.

A friend of mine sometimes corrects what he sees as bad or negligent behavior -- like taking people to task for riding the elevator one floor. He's doing what we need to as a species -- he's reminding people that they could be better.

When you tell a person they have no value to you if they don't want to go to university, or if they want to pursue dance instead of mathematics, you are not molding them to be a better human being. If you demand that someone goes against their natural inclinations or they will not be loved, you are being manipulative, not educational.

You are making the world a worse place, by insisting that someone be a lesser person than they could be.

That's why I take bullying personally. I was not protected growing up. All the voices in my head are negative. They all tell me that I would be better off if I wasn't as intelligent, because if I wasn't smart, I wouldn't have been willful. I would have done what I was told. I would have gone to university, would have become a teacher, would have married, and had children, and would be happy. I would not be in pain.

They tell me that no one wants to read my writing, that I don't have a particularly good voice and that I sing off-key. They tell me that I missed out on my chance to be successful. They tell me that I missed my chance to be loved.

They tell me no one cares about me the way I am.

If there's no more to life than the voices in my head, I don't think much of life.

I can't believe that there's no more to life than that. But I'm in a fix, and it has just become more clear as I get older.

Without memories of good voices to speak louder than the bad ones sometimes, I have no ability to feel respected. Without memories of compliments, or praise, or love, I have no ability to feel satisfaction or pleasure.

With no teacher having stood up for me, I have nothing to counter the negativity that lives inside me.

I needed an adult, any adult, to be there to help me. I had no trouble developing a sense of responsibility. But the flip-side of that, a feeling that I was entitled to anything, that I never have had.

I have no feeling that I deserve ANYTHING out of life. I have no feeling that I deserve love, or respect, or success, or even visibility. I don't believe I intrinsically deserve to take up space.

So I have always tried to take up as little room as possible. I have tried not to make too much noise, or to be too proud. I had it drilled it into my head that I was NOT special, NOT unique, NOT talented. I heard these things every day of my life -- when I spoke out. When I was quiet, all I heard was that I was lazy, which in the end I found an acceptable trade.

I don't any more.

I cannot live any longer without respect. I cannot live any longer pretending that I am not exactly what and who I am.

The only problem is that the years of silence have warped my own perspectives as well. They've warped my ability to believe in myself.

"Self-esteem" has become almost as much of a bullshit term now as "family values."

But I have none, and I feel the lack.

Yes, your self-esteem is what allows you to navigate the adult world while retaining your own identity. Yes, self-esteem comes from a combination of your own inner resources, the strength you're born with, and the influences of your family, peers, and teachers.

But no, it's not something that can be legislated. At least, you can throw around the word and expect the world to miraculously become a better place.

It's not that simple

It's not as easy as providing a "level playing field." I was a victim of that thinking too often in my own life, where "level playing field" was just a synonym for trying to make everyone act the same.

I like the idea of "equality of opportunity," but in some people's books that makes more even more of a socialist.

And the truth is, I don't want justice for the world. I want it for myself.

So I'm here to say -- if I don't get respect, I'm walking away. If you expect me to demonstrate my love but don't give it back, I'm walking.

Maybe I can develop, late in life, a sense of self strong enough to serve me for the rest of my life. Because I want to feel that life is worth living, and that the person that I am is the one I was meant to be.

Anything else is intolerable. I can't stand feeling so broken inside, especially when I feel invisible too. It's one thing to be lying there wounded; another completely to be lying wounded in the dark.

I tend to think I was too realistic, that I understood too much about the world. I had my eyes open, and I saw that if I cried in the night and someone heard, it was worse than when I cried quietly.

My friend says that he saw movies and television shows in which people were better to each other than what he'd experienced, so he knew there was something better out there. I saw the same shows, and thought they were wish fulfillment.

I want to believe in myself. I want to start having self-esteem. I want to love myself, and believe I'm special.

Is THAT too much to ask?

	Enter your search termsSubmit search form
	Web www.wildsound-filmmaking-feedback-events.com