Who's Bullying Who??

Disclaimer:  I haven't written in awhile.  I'm not in the mood for HTML. 
Love me anyway.

One other thing, my ex-husband has a side that he has not shared with
me.  This is one of those posts where you might think he was the worst person
but be wise enough to know that there are sides and while my side/experience

is absolutely valid, his side, the side you are not hearing, is equally valid.

Man, it's a beautiful morning here in North Texas.  I'm sitting out on my patio, the sun is coming up, Teddy, my puppy, is whiney-talking to the next door neighbor's dogs and they are whiney-talking back.

I started this post yesterday.  I'm glad I got held up, because it would have been a very different post yesterday.  Yesterday I read this...

https://celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/zelda-williams-quits-social-media-in-wake-of-father-s-death-150000165.html

Just a little story about some disgusting internet bullies who thought that it was A-O-Kay to criticize Robin William's little girl in the wake of his death.  REALLY?  The momma-bear in me took over and the writing was angry.

But things happened.  Life.  Laughter.  A great movie with a friend.  A great talk with my 15 year old.  A beautiful sunrise.

and this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXmClJJz57s

As I sit here in my favorite light of the day, I realize that there will always be bullies...as a matter of fact there always HAVE been bullies.  Some of them will rip out your heart.

But I don't think it's the bullies that we need to be focusing on.  Follow me here.

See, I never really noticed bullies growing up.  Oh, sure, you don't move around as much as I did and always feel like you belong.  What I'm saying is that bullying didn't really take root and BOTHER me/change how I felt about myself until that bully was the one person that I needed to love me more than any other.

I believe I've established the fact that my parents are AWESOME.  Probably the awesomest parents that have ever lived on this planet.  If not, I would like my witnesses to stand up and corroborate the vast coolness of my parents, because there are PLENTY of people outside of my brother and I in this world who were made important and loved by Tim and Shari Perman.

And they raised me an AWESOME brother who loves me and is proud of me, FAR more than I deserve.

We had a saying in my family, when the world gets tough you stand back to back with your family and fight the world.  My family ALWAYS had my back.

From the teacher in first grade who sent me home crying because if my name was spelled with an "E", then it was CLEARLY a boy's name and I was CLEARLY NOT a boy.  (in case you were left wondering, Stacey...that's my name, don't wear it out...but please, spell it right, cuz my mom almost came to blows with my first grade teacher over it.)

To the little boy in my class who told me that my name was weird...my mother said, "Well, what's HIS name?"  "Mickey Stratanski"...she got quite a laugh over that one.  Still does.

To the boys in middle school or high school that would pick on me/throw me in the trash can/knock my books down...whatever...boys are stooooopppiiddd (which is not the same as stupid...boys are not stupid, to clarify)...to the girls who wouldn't talk to me because I didn't fit in their "group".

By the time high school rolled around, I was pretty comfortable in my own skin.  I'd moved too much to have any group except my family, and my role was pretty well-established as the darling youngest daughter in the best family ever.  Other people loved to join my family, and while that didn't make me "cool" in class, it still gave me a support system of people who believed me capable and funny.

So then I met and married my husband.  The man who would teach me that I was lazy, and fat, and had no fashion sense.  The one who would teach me that I was never going to be any good at sports. That I should never sing or laugh or sneeze because he hated the sound of my voice.  He didn't say these things all at once, but over the years, a little more every year, it became apparent that he hated every single thing about me.  I don't want to say that he was evil or even intentional in any of this.  He had his own demons that he was fighting and I was an easy target because I'd only ever really been loved.  Never mind that one of my personality traits, be it a flaw or a charm, is that I NEED attention from those people that I love.  That can be a hard responsibility.

In time, I didn't hear my dad's voice.  Or my brother's.  Or my favorite ex-boyfriend's.  (See, I didn't really care what the girls thought, weird, I know) I only heard his.  And I learned to hate myself.  And it was his voice that I heard condemning me.

It wasn't until my dad DIED that I could hear my dad say, "That's my girl, I'm so proud of you" again.  Maybe it was his death and my absolute obsession with everything about my father in the months following his death.  Maybe it was being surrounded by my family, so many of whom remembered him and reminded me of him.  I don't know for sure what fixed it in my head but that week of his funeral rang the death knell on me accepting that negative talk about my father's daughter and subsequently started the end of my marriage.

Interestingly enough, I've gone a long time STILL hearing my ex's negativity in my head.  When I wake in the middle of the night tearing myself apart, it is either the many things he said to me or my OWN voice taking up the hateful refrain.  "You are NOT good enough"..."You are lazy"..."You are a terrible housekeeper".  "Nobody cares, Stacey, JEEZ, Nobody cares."

Hold on now, before you go feeling sorry for me...please let us remember, I have not lived with my ex in over 2 years.  We actually have a pretty good relationship now.  He's kind and gentle with the girls.  He enjoys his life and I enjoy mine.  A few months AFTER the divorce he apologized for his mistakes and I forgave him, absolutely.

So who's doing the bullying here?

IT IS NOT my ex.  The man who broke up his family so that he wouldn't hurt us anymore and went on to try to get help so that he could climb out of the hole he'd fallen into during our marriage.  Honestly, leaving us turned out to be one of the most noble things that he did in our marriage.

My friends reading this are probably saying, "For crying out loud, Stacey, WE love you, WE tell you great things about you, why, ON EARTH, can you not hear OUR voices?"  Oh, how I wish that I knew.  I do know that it is pretty common.  I used to teach computer classes and we were evaluated at the end of every class.  There was an interesting phenomenon that occurred.  You might have 16 students, 15 of those students might have considered you a straight up 10...and one, might have given you 7s and 8s.  You know which one most of us focused on?  That's right, the low score.  I think it's arrogant to never consider that you might need to improve something and only believe your greatest fans.  But COME ON!  Many of us walk through this world only believing our greatest critics...BEING our greatest critics.

You wanna know who does the most damaging bullying?  We do.  To ourselves.  Sometimes we hear the bullying in other people's voices because that may be where the slur started, but every single time we repeat it to ourselves, WE ARE KILLING OURSELVES.  We are killing our potential for the day or the year or our life.  Every time we say those words in our heads that point out our weaknesses, we are forgetting our strengths. 

You know who does the SECOND most damage to our souls?  Those people that we love the most.  I avoided being too awfully bothered by bullying as a kid NOT because the bullies didn't exist, but because my parents and brother mattered more.  My parents were too much a part of every aspect of my life.  They were too ready to love and accept any friend of mine into our family exactly as they were, and build them up, too.  People joined my family because my parents didn't take no guff AND loved the stuffing out of you. PERIOD.  If you ate at our table...you ate what mom served, happily.  And if you didn't, there was always some low level of joyful mocking.  And as much as she could dish it out, she could take it and laugh and make you feel smart for your humor.  Him too.  My daddy would tell us, when we were looking particularly lovely, that he might be drunk, but we were ugly and at least he'd be sober in the morning, with a twinkle in his eye that let us to know exactly how beautiful we were to him.

With that kind of adults in our lives...both mine and my friends...how could we believe any of the nonsense that the bullies threw? 

There will always be bullies.  Idiots who should know better.  People who are angry and believe that they are "helping" by saying the most hateful thing at the wrong moment.  Sophomoric fools who think it's funny to tear people down.  Trolls.

What we need is the kind of insulation that my parents provided with their love and acceptance to my whole community of kids.  Because with that kind of insulation, eventually you can HEAR the foolishness in the unkindness.  Because it is foolishness.

Stop looking at the bullies...be the insulation. 

See ya around...