An open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no MRAs, no I’m-not-really-an-MRA-buts, don’t be mean.
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
It’s cool, I got what you mean, gilshalos.
I just imagine my brain is like Deadpool: constantly, aggressively overcompensating for past injury and trauma. It helps me feel more badass and less fucked up.
@marinerachel
I have been through similar periods in my life with the waning of friendship groups, usually because I was going through some bad-head-stuff and most people don’t know how to deal with it when a friend has long-term sads, so they get awkward and stop talking, or get angry that their attempts to help aren’t suddenly solving the problem. Or I was entertaining in small doses, or when I was trying to be funny and interesting, but as soon as I stopped people seemed to lose interest.
I’ve thought “What is wrong with me? Am I broken? Can people smell the wrongness in my blood and stay away?”
I don’t actually have any UK friendship groups, except for my boyfriend and his extended social groups. I had a really epic-ly bad friendship-breakup about a month after I moved here last year, and it basically took me back to insecure teenager square one where I can’t trust people or seek to form lasting relationships. I don’t ask to hang out with people anymore because I’m like “It’ll go bad. Eventually they’ll see whatever (ex-friend) saw and they’ll hate me, they’ll leave me or hurt me.”
I am almost completely alone in a foreign country because I am so emotionally wounded by that experience that I can’t relate to people anymore.
I guess I am saying that I don’t think there is anything wrong with you. I think you are finding the wrong people to try and be friends with. It sounds like they are mostly assholes with no understanding.
Good places to look for friends? I would say charities needing volunteers. The kind of people who give their own time and energy to compassionate causes tend to be decent people, plus you would obviously have a shared interest in that cause. But maybe I am being naive.
I also made friends in the gym where I used to go, and the cafes I studied in at university (all back in Australia now, but still on facebook when I need them). But you do sort of have to work at those friendships, because obviously people are initially just talking to you because you’re a customer.
Really, I just think that there are proto-friends out there you haven’t met yet. Maybe because you, as you say, have low self esteem you haven’t recognised people reaching out to you tentatively for friendship, maybe you (like other people I know with low self esteem) over-compensate and come across as brash or aggressive when you’re really not.
I don’t think you are un-friend-able. I think you’re interesting and insightful and that if we lived in the same city you’d be a lovely person to meet up with for coffee.
@gilshalos
It really was devastating. I think that screaming is the emotionally honest reaction that none of us have allowed ourselves to have.
If you can handle reading a bit more about it. you might try the article that went up on Bella Caledonia. A lot of sadness, yes, but the fight isn’t over yet:
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/19/wipe-your-eyes-on-your-feet/
The Scots are mobilising. This result will not happen again. And there bloody well WILL be an ‘again’.
It’s a longer fight that anyone predicted, but independence will come eventually.
Marinerachel, I feel for you.
Contactless internet hug across international borders, coming right up. I’ll have my shark pillow (Saruman) transmit it via pillow-net and you can pick it up at the nearest stuffed animal or pillow of your convenience.
Good luck with the appointment, as well.
LBT, Saruman wants to know if he should also forward a hug through the pillow-net your direction.
Anyone else need hugs?
I HAVE FOUND A CREEPER SOLUTION! (Well, specifically, Kid has.) MY SPIRITS ARE HEREBY IMPROVED.
WOOT for Kid!
*confetti for creeper solution* I second the motion earlier: Fuck rape.
I have to say this: OMG KITTY SO CUTE LET ME TAKE YOU HOME!
I will take a hug. marinerachel, I think if you keep doing what you do, you’ll make real friends. Or try meetups, if strangers aren’t an issue. But, honestly, I made two new friends through work and UPS respectively. Apparently in this day and age people feel like they don’t have enough friends, so your chances of meeting someone who is receptive to friendship are higher! Just try to keep going; I know it sucks, but it’s better to wait for people you really get on with anyway.
My two cents on relationships: Before meeting my current partner, I hadn’t had a relationship that was healthy since the age of seventeen. And that was long distance. (Ah, British accents.) But now, it boggles my mind on how happy I am. I met him for lunch and ice cream today, and I spotted him before he saw me. He was dressed for a job interview, and reading a book, and I was so happy to see him I was smiling like a dork and walked right up to him. And he wasn’t even mad that I was late. It’s getting hard to worry about the relationship exploding when he’s seen me angry and sick and depressed and still loves me and we laugh together and…
Okay, if I was listening to someone else talk I would complain about getting diabetes, so I’ll stop.
(Also, black sesame ice cream is delicious.)
Hey, folks. Mommy-type problem here and if anyone has any suggestions, I’d welcome them, as I seem to be running short on practical solutions.
I think my son is being bullied at school, and I don’t know what to do to help him. It’s mostly non-physical so far (he’s big for his age) but it’s getting pervasive, and he was crying about not wanting to go this morning. Of course, that makes him more of a target, but what kind of a jerk tells a child “stop crying or they’ll pick on you more”? This happened last year, for a while, and he solved it the way you’re not supposed to. He punched the ringleader and bloodied his nose and they were friends for a bit after, but now the kid has started up again. I thought we had worked through this! MrGrump grew up very rough and tumble and all of his solutions seem to involve violence, but I don’t think our son is up to prolonged physical violence. Even if he won all the school yard fights, just fighting would damage him because of who he is.
Grrrr. Not making sense today.
Anyhow, any suggestions would be most welcome!
I’m so sorry your son is being bullied.I probably have no good advice. With that caveat…
One thing that occurs to me is that bullies like to see they’re having an effect. As long as the bullying isn’t physical, I wonder if just not reacting is a possibility? Not getting angry, ignoring it, removing himself from the area. Alternatively, I was a funny kid, and I deflected the very mild bullying I got in elementary school by making fun of the boys who were making fun of me. I was funnier than they were. XD
If your son will talk to you about what they’re doing, maybe you can role play a few non-violent responses that suit the person he is.
Just to clarify, I don’t mean that your son shouldn’t have an emotional reaction to someone treating him badly, just that he should try not to let the bullies see that reaction.
Oh, and I got offered a job today. Sending good job hunting karma out to anyone else looking!
Congratulations on the job offer, cloudiah! I will bask here to soak up the good job hunting karma for a minute.
o/
Thanks, and best of luck on the job hunt! I know you’ll find something good, grumpycat!
Uhg, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m right back to where I was three months ago, weeping uncontrollably, feeling worthless and like I can’t go on without that asshole’s approval. I don’t know why I’m reverting to this place, how I haven’t properly moved beyond it yet.
I’m going to have an apple and some yoghurt and take my meds and cook dinner for myself and a friend, see if that doesn’t keep my head above water. It’ll be a while before I can get in to see my shrink. I wonder if there’s any value in going to see my GP in the next couple days.
It’s been almost four months and I swear the only progress I’ve made is I’ve grown more accustomed to hurting like this. I feel like it hasn’t got any better during these moments. For a while there I was having fun again and looking forward to things and although I was still hurting a lot my outlook was hopeful. I’ve lost that now. Any progress I’d made feels lost. I don’t want to alarm anyone because I’m going to take care of myself and do all the right things but I’m just so fucking frustrated with hurting and feeling like no matter what I do I’m going to keep hurting and other people are always going to be able to tear me down. I’m so angry in addition to the hurt and fear and exhaustion I’m feeling.
There are two ways to stop bullying:
– people in authority taking it seriously and putting a stop to it
– other kids taking it seriously and putting a stop to it
Bullies are A+ at doing their thing away from the sight of teachers and other authorities, and too often you have teachers who won’t step in if they didn’t see it with their own eyes (and, sometimes, even if they do). That has to change. That is a cultural change that has to happen at the school.
Other kids stepping in is even more effective. Bullying is almost always carried out in sight of other kids, who do nothing. When other kids are willing to intervene (mainly by telling a teacher what’s going on) bullying stops. But, for obvious reasons, it’s pretty hard to get schoolchildren to do anything more constructive than just stand there ignoring it.
Long story short: there’s nothing your son can do to make bullying stop, and the onus should not be on him in the first place. The school should have his back, and obviously it doesn’t. Therein is the problem.
I suck at giving advice. All the things I’ve thought about writing here sound really pointless and pretentious and stupid. With that in mind, LBT, marinerachel, gilshalos, grumpyoldnurse, anyone who might want them…
…hugs.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IlRjxvjBsjE/UG8v9cAlZoI/AAAAAAAAFRc/LymPklVELsw/s1600/funny-pictures-hugs-are-now-available.jpg
Grumpyoldnurse: Not a mommy, but I was a bully magnet in elementary school.
Do you know how well the school monitors kids during recesses? That was when I got the brunt of it, because there were only a few monitors and the monitors would keep getting sucked into monitoring kickball or fun things on one half of the playground, while I’d be getting followed, taunted, cornered, and nonsense. It wasn’t bad in the classroom, because I was awesome at ignoring the petty, minor, “I’m going to be nasty in ways that the teacher won’t call out”.
I didn’t fess up until my sister noticed me wearing long shirts all the time and dragged me to mom, pulled up my sleeves, and made me explain why dummy was misspelled 4 times in sharpie…
Basically, they were fools who couldn’t spell dummy, so who cared about their opinions, right? I mean, it did bug me a bit, and I did start chronically skipping eating at lunch (still ate normally at home), and I definitely stopped being that social and became uber-bookworm which probably helped my grades immensely.
But, the threatening to squish me like a spider (after playing a spider in the class play…) from the upper levels in the playground? And the cornering? Not so cool.
Things she did after finding out:
1) Called the school to ask what school monitors were doing.
~~Was told that there were adequate monitors, and that she should tell me to find them
2) Took her lunch-breaks to sneak to the playground and check out the monitor situation herself.
~~Told the school she had wandered through the entire playground 3x during a recess break without a monitor questioning her, and only seeing monitors at this particular area.
3) Badgered the school into letting me stay inside for lunch and recess, either in the classroom, TAing for kindergarten, or in the library, for the days where I really didn’t want to go outside.
4) Badgered the school into assigning more teachers to monitor duty, because if I could get ambushed with a sharpie that meant there weren’t enough, and hiding next to my mom all recesses wouldn’t solve anything.
5) When I started showing an interest in Taekwon-do, she jumped on it as a “Yes, let’s do this” so that I could know what I could do. I didn’t have to use it, ever, even though there were some situations where it could have been justified, but knowing you could have fought back was pretty reassuring. At least, I got to say in my head that I was letting them feel good about themselves and they were just silly enough to fall for it.
She didn’t even tell me the days she was wandering around the playground, because she didn’t want me to get subjected to the running to mommy thing and she wanted to see what my usual recess time was like.
It made elementary school tolerable.
What ultimately worked was moving to a different district for middle school. By the time I started attending inside my district again for high school, both me and the bullies had grown up a bit and we actually got to be friends. Well, one of the bullies didn’t grow up and went juvenile delinquent, but one of the others turned into a great guy who started dating one of my few elementary school friends by senior year.
So, I guess the advice is to pester the school into monitoring better without looming over your kid, and pester the school into making sure your kid has options. THE SCHOOL and the bullies are the ones who need fixing. Your kid doesn’t. It isn’t his job to avoid them, but the school’s job to give him bully free options.
Like, if the school tells him he has to stay inside to avoid bullies, that’s not cool and will make it worse, because then the bullies win because they got the school to tell their victim what to do.
Or if you hover over him, the bullies win because they got him trapped under watchful eyes all the time, and his freedom’s restricted, not theirs.
Make sure your kid has a choice, and that he knows it isn’t his fault, no matter what options he chooses. So many times kids hear (and I was told before my mom and sister found out) that if they’re having problems, they should have just talked to a teacher or a monitor.
Talking to (and/or finding) teachers are hard. Getting them to believe you when they didn’t see what happened is even harder. I tried before giving up, a few months before the sharpie incident.
That justification from school officials is BS of the highest order.
Being bullied is not his fault.
Also, if you’re going to pitch a stink with the school, be subtle around the kids. Don’t let the bullies know you’re doing the momma-bear, because that will turn into bully fodder. Just be momma-bear with officials, out of the way of prying kiddy-eyes.
If you choose to lurk around the playground, don’t introduce yourself as mom, or lurk to obviously near your kid. Bully fodder.
I’d be cautious about telling him to just suck it up and ignore them (or pretend to ignore them), though. They will eventually give up, but only after escalating to however high they think they can get away with. The ignoring is only good if that ceiling for escalation is low enough that they can’t do really nasty stuff.
It started with just the easy to ignore verbal stuff, and got worse when I didn’t react. Eventually they gave up, but it took a while. Unless your boy has the patience of a saint and the healing factor of Wolverine, working on a plan b to “Ignore the little beasts” is critical.
Ignoring the little beasts does help a bit though, especially if you turn it into a game of sorts.
Internal monologuing and imagination help in that front. I’d pretend they’re doing a cliche’d villain monologue, and giving all their secrets away…
So… a little rambly, and hopefully helpful?
Best of luck.
I’ll send hugs via Saruman to your little ‘un and yourself.
@ marinerachel: if it helps, I approve of you.
@LBT: Memories suck. We’ve been through enough of them now that we know the drill, but they suck anyway.
@ grumpy : I hope you can protect the kiddo.
Sorry you’re feeling so low, marinerachel. Hope things get better.
Much better answers from everyone else on the bullying front. Ignore my answer, and go with theirs!
Hugs for anyone who wants one. In fact, I’m just going to add a bunch to the barrel and leave it here in the center of the room.
@ cloudiah – Thanks! Humour is good. Suggested some throwbacks for the little grump for the other boy’s usual insults.
Also, CONGRATS!! Hope the job works for you.
@ Policy of Madness – thanks for responding! I agree with all three of your points. I also had a conversation with my son’s teacher, and found out about some incidents that he hadn’t told me about where she stepped in and stopped it. Apparently, I only hear from little grump when no one helps him, which is actually kind of a relief. The school itself doesn’t seem to do much, but this particular teacher is quite lovely. I kind of wish she could be with him all the time at school, but get why she can’t. At least there’s one grown-up at the school that I can count on!
@ Anarchonist – anarchist kitty hugs ALWAYS welcome! 🙂
@ contrapangloss – very kind of you to give such a detailed and insightful reply, it was very helpful! Your mom sounds like she kicks all the butt! I will borrow some from her playbook. Also, a bit late, but I’m so sorry the kids were such little shits to you. At least, based on your contributions here, you seem to have overcome the BS. Ignoring it isn’t something that our family really went to, as MrGrump was more likely to try to arrange a ‘storming of the Bastille’ type solution to dealing with the school, and has been showing little grump some of the less dubious self defence stuff he learned from both hockey and a very unstable childhood! I like your suggestions much more.
@ blahlistic – thanks for the kind wishes!
@ marinerachel – grieving sometimes comes in waves like this. I don’t know if this will help you, but when I went through my divorce, I felt the same thing, even though the ex was a right shit to me at the end. I tried some self talk about the ways in which he was wrong and how I didn’t deserve it. At first I didn’t believe myself, but I persevered, and started to blame myself less and less, and then I started to feel hopeful again. And, then, something would happen, and I’d be back at square one. It’s only been four months, too. That’s not very long to get healed from a broken heart. Hugs, if you want them!
Ahahahahaha. More memories came up. Apparently we got molested more than once. At least this one wasn’t the Kid’s? It seems to have predated the entire system, meaning there is no telling whether this happened twice or two hundred times. Joyous fun.
This isn’t even tragic anymore. This has crashed straight into the realm of absurdity. It’d be a fucking comedy if it weren’t my goddamn life.
Fuck it. I’m watching Markiplier videos for the rest of the night. He will be loud and screamy and obnoxious and it’ll be great and hopefully I won’t have more nightmares about my grandfather tonight.
RE: contrapangloss
I’d be cautious about telling him to just suck it up and ignore them (or pretend to ignore them), though. They will eventually give up, but only after escalating to however high they think they can get away with.
Yeah, I knew kids who got their heads split open due to trying to “ignore” bullies. The bullies just saw and went, “Wow, we can do ANYTHING to this kid with impunity!” So yeah. I HATE the “just ignore it and show no emotional reaction” advice.
RE: grumpyoldnurse
Unfortunately, I have no advice to give, on account of our parents being completely uninterested in discussing any bullying going on with us. We came home bleeding and bandaged once, and I don’t think they noticed. So uh, don’t do that?
@gilshalos
Yup!!! How did you know?? 🙂