on abuse and bullies

[norral]

in getting to know people on the board it has become very very clear to me that many many of us grew up or are growing up in abusive enviornments. i want to tell a little story

my dad was an alcoholic. many times i would see him drink 30 cans of beer in one night. now people dont do this because they are happy . and the alcohol makes this unhappiness come out. some people are phsically abusive he was verbally abusive. and it kind of hard to reason with a drunk.
anyway i grew up in this enviornment. one night i was 16 and he was upstairs with my sister and my mother being abusive because he was drunk. i came upstairs and i was watching this and i just had it i couldnt take it anymore. i slugged him. there was absolute silnece in the room. my dad looked at me with hatred in his eyes and launched a shoe at me which the angels deflected so that it didnt hit me. if it had it would have broken something. my sister and mom got in between us and he left the house for the night.

why do i relate this. everybody has their breaking point. sometimes these people need a wakeup call and they dont get light and love. if they did they wouldnt be abusers or alcoholics. u have to speak to them in their own language.
bottom line my dad never got drunk in the house again. so i guess it served its purpose. i didnt want to do it but i couldnt take it anymore 16 years of living with that crap. so dont please dont be afraid to stand up for yourself. u have every right to do so

love
norral

[Brittany]

I've hit my breaking point on numerous occasions, and it has never ended well for me. I always ended up wishing I had handled it in a different way. The last time involved having a shouting, cussing match with my overly demanding immediate superior at work, which got me in more trouble than it was worth. It got spread around the whole store and I was seriously ostracized afterward. I was so mortified I wanted to crawl under my bed and die. I just kept thinking "I wish I would have gone to the manager and discussed it quietly instead of snapping and making an idiot of myself."

Of course, I can see how your situation was different. The last time I had an incident with an alcoholic (my friend's dad) I didn't hit him. We just huddled in the basement, terrified, until he finally went to sleep. If I'd hit him, he probably would have shot me, as he had numerous guns in the house. After that my parents wouldn't let me go over to her house anymore.

[norral]

i am not advocating hitting people but after 16 years i couldnt take it anymore. each situation is unique but the point i am making is that we all have the right to stand up to these people. they really are unconcious and sometimes the only thing that wakes them up is a shock. they are not getting love and light they dont live in that world. and i have gotten a lot better with my temper so before i say something impulsively i think first. responding in anger to these people gives them the upper hand but we have every right to respond and state our truth clearly. if they dont like it i dont really care to be honest tough its time for people to wake up and if i am part of that process so be it. ive often thought if i was a woman and a man put their hands of me it would be the last person they ever touched. i would have to kill them as i cannot stand anybody putting their hands of me like i was their property. so they would die and i would go to trial and hopefully i woud be acquitted. one thing is that i never perpetuated that pattern in my marriage, in 42 years we have never ever argued in front of the kids we always discussed things in private so i thank god for that

norral

[Brittany]

I understand your actions, Brother. The only reason I haven't hit some pretty abhorrent people in my life is that I'm a tiny little girl and I realized they would clobber me.

I feel like if we were all honest with our feelings to begin with, a lot of such "outbursts" wouldn't happen. But we hoard our feelings and let it build up and build up until it explodes, and then there's usually no going back. When I was younger my dad had a serious drug problem. He and my mom were always fighting about it, and I was stuck somewhere in the middle. They told me not to tell anyone (most likely so that he wouldn't be sent to jail and then our family would be in the streets for lack of money), but I didn't understand the reasons at the time.

For years I kept it all bottled up inside and I felt like I was dying from the inside out. It caused a lot of blockages in my system- a lot of oppositional behavior on my part. I became quite the menace in high school because I had so much repressed hatred and fear. Then, finally, when I hit college I said "screw this" and told people what was going on. I let out all that pain and fear I'd been keeping for so long, and it was like the knot inside of me was slowly coming undone.

I often wonder what it would have been like if I had just told someone to begin with. Could I have avoided all that pain? People, especially children, should never feel like they have to bear the burdens of their parents alone like that. It is a great way to screw up a kid.

We're supposed to have reliable systems in our schools and stuff...trusted counselors kids are encouraged to talk to, but it doesn't always work out how it should. We live in the days of flooded systems and corrupt officials, so a lot of these kids just get pushed to the side or, even worse, made to feel as if they are doing something wrong.

I think our whole system of doing things needs a major overhaul. We ignore the emotional issues of today's youth and then you wind up with kids snapping and shooting up their schools, or, at the very least, getting into fights and winding up delinquents. We look at those children like they are monsters, but the are just products of the system. We need a new system.

(Btw, my dad has been clean for years now, and he's a wonderful man. I don't want it to seem like I'm slamming him.)

[norral]

lyn
i think u bring up an excellent point. we bottle up our emotions and dont say things and i think it would be much healthier if we let people know how we feel from the beginning instead of letting it build up. im glad that your dad is clean and that u have a good relationship with him now and that he was able to accomplish that for himself and for his family. i think i will write a poem based on what im feeling because of this

norral