Hate junkie

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Chances are you are sitting on a comfy couch reading this. Your refrigerator is full of good, fresh food. Your heat is set at about 70 degrees but, that’s OK because if you get chilly you can just grab a heated throw and plug that in, right? If you feel under the weather, you can just call your doctor and have all your health needs taken care of. You are safe, warm and well fed. You are a valued member of your chosen religious organization. You have a home…a family…a life. On paper you are a good person living a good life. So, then why are you so afraid? I ask you that because we live in a society that is wildly addicted to marginalizing other human beings. American society marginalizes almost everyone who isn’t a wealthy white male. We marginalize everyone who doesn’t have white skin, anyone who is LGBTQ+, women, people living in poverty, homeless people, people with physical illnesses and people with mental illness, disabled people, single parents, overweight people just to name a few. Much of these marginalization efforts are born from propaganda being fed to us by capitalists who almost exclusively use fear to take all our money or politicians who’s only real goal in their intentional efforts to marginalize others, is to enrich their own lives and bank accounts. Fear is the biggest and most powerful of all human emotions. They know that. It’s not rocket science. It’s actually embarrassingly simple. They use you by harnessing your fear. You do their dirty work and they love that. It delights them to no end and they live much more lavish lives than you ever will.

When you marginalize others, it briefly elevates you…at least in your brain it does. It’s a scientific fact. You got a little burst of dopamine at the expense of another living, breathing human being. Someone you don’t even know. Someone you will never see, hear or touch. Someone with hopes and dreams and beauty. But, that hate gets you high and that feels so good to you. It feels good because it makes you feel a fleeting moment of power in your otherwise powerless life. It’s no different that the high you get from heroin. That is the ONLY reason you do it. You don’t even give a second thought to the fact that you’ve hurt someone you don’t even know. Ignoring the harm you cause doesn’t make the harm magically go away. The damage to the people you marginalize is still there and you don’t feel better about yourself in any type of sustainable manner. That high you get is fleeting. You need a constant supply of that “hate” to keep getting that high. Hate is your drug. Hate is fear. You are an addict. A hate junkie. The irony of the fact that you have become exactly what you despise most in the world, is forever lost on you. You lurk in the comment sections on social media and lay a path of destruction everywhere you go. You don’t care at all that one day one of your comments will be too much for someone to take and they end their life. You don’t care about the tears of their parents or other loved ones left behind. You won’t see it so it doesn’t matter to you. You think like a small child. All that simply because you hate yourself but don’t have the basic level of self awareness necessary to be able to see it. You might be sitting there thinking that I couldn’t possibly be talking about you! How dare I, right? But, if you find yourself constantly telling everyone else in the world how to live their lives, I can assure you I am talking about you. There’s no denying it. You…are a hate junkie and that is nothing to be proud of.

Yes, Adults Bullying Children is Alive and Well

I was divorced when my children were 5 and 7 years old.  I raised them to be honest, thoughtful, kind children.  The manner in which I was raising them, did not suddenly change when I signed my divorce papers.  The school they went to and their young ages, created an environment where they were surrounded by kids living in two parent homes.  My own parents were divorced in 1977.  In those days no one got divorced…rather it was less common.  We lived on a cul-de-sac in a great neighborhood.  The second my parents separated, my older sister and I lost our babysitting jobs…the neighborhood kids shunned us and eventually we were the target of their bullying.  Thankfully, that stopped because we moved shortly after although, I don’t remember caring much about what they said to us…it was just a mild discomfort to me.  Looking back on it, I can see how painful it would be to a child to be made fun of simply because their parents were divorcing.  Divorce is hard enough on kids, never mind having to deal with schoolyard bullies, right?

Fast forward to my own divorce.  The kids  in my children’s classes never made fun of them or treated them differently when they became the children of divorced parents.  To my utter and complete shock, it was the parents of the other children and their own Stepmother who became the bullies to my children. Suddenly, my children were to be watched closely.  I had no idea any of this was going on until it came to my attention in three different ways.

The first indication of adult bullying of my children, came from their own Father’s house.  My daughter came home in tears to me one day telling me that her Stepmother had accused her of stealing her stepsister’s gum.  I thought it was a misunderstanding but, when I spoke to her Father about it he was convinced she did it.  At first, I thought maybe she did do it but, what’s the big deal…my sisters stole from each other on a daily basis…especially if it was GUM!  Shortly after this my son was accused by his Stepmother of stealing a significant amount of money.  Mind you, there were the same two kids who literally thought the police were going to stop us at the doors of the movie theater for smuggling in candy to avoid paying quadruple the cost from the concession stand…..so, now I was more interested in the issue.  I talked to my son and truly believed him when he told me he didn’t take anything.  I spoke to his Father who was convinced that he took the money.  From that moment on, they were accused so many times of stealing in that house that they would go there and lock themselves in their rooms.  They were even fearful to walk down to the kitchen to get something to eat so, often went hungry.

The second instance of adult bullying came from, what I thought, was a good friend of mine.  She was married and our kids spent lots of time together playing as we talked and laughed and had fun.  Then one day she accused my daughter of stealing a dance video game disc.  This made no sense because the only way to play the game was if you also had the touch sensitive pads to put on the floor to dance on. She couldn’t ever play the game without them so, why would she steal it??  My ‘friend’ found the disc three days later but, on my end the damage was already done…she could no longer be trusted if she would misplace something and immediately come to the conclusion that my daughter took it.  I never spoke to her again and oddly enough she tried to friend me on Facebook a couple of years ago as if nothing ever happened.  Dummy.

The third person who accused one of my children of stealing something was my old neighbor.  My son would often hang out with her son.  She was also divorced.  One day she came to me and told me my son had stolen her son’s Gameboy.  I asked my son if he did already knowing what his answer would be. He told me no so, I told her that he didn’t steal it.  She stormed off angrily and I didn’t hear from her until a few days later when she called to tell me the Gameboy had turned up.  Her spin on it was that my son had figured out he was in trouble and put it back.  The only problem with that theory was that my son had not entered her house once after the Gameboy had been misplaced.  When I brought this to her attention, her response was to tell me that he must have somehow gotten it back in her house.  Seriously??

From then on, I picked my friends carefully.  My children literally avoided going to their friends houses and to this day are more introverted than most.  These adult bullies had changed the way they viewed the world.  They knew that they couldn’t trust people.  What an awful lesson to learn at the hands of ignorant adults.  The only revenge I really have is that my children have grown up to be the most trustworthy, amazing kids I know.  The fact that they had me on their side was not lost on them.  We talked in length about these three events and I successfully conveyed to them that the problem was not with them.  The one big way a bully wins, is if their target believes what the bully is saying or doing.

Now that I look back on these events, I am blown away by the realization that the same generation who tried to bully me and my sisters when we were young, grew up to bully my own children.  These people grew up to be adults who felt so bad about themselves that they made innocent children the targets of their self hate.  Now, THAT is sad.  I took care of them with my own children the same way I did for myself when I was young……ignore them and go on to live my life.  Luckily, I was present enough in my children’s lives enough to fight for them when I had to and to teach them about what was really at play there.  How shameful that adults act in this manner.  When I see all the news about bullies these days I know one thing to be true….bullies are raised to be the way that they are.  There is no excuse in the word for a child or an adult to act as a bully.  If they are that only means one thing….they are living with a parent who is bullying others or they are being bullied by that parent.  Either way, if the behavior is not taken care of at home they will grow up to repeat the pattern.

It is sad when a child bullies another child.  It is pathetic when an adult bullies a child.