Bullies
I'm back! I'm sorry for missing Thursday's post. My kid has Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, my wife and I had to pack up for a weekend away, AND the Giants were playing the Eagles that night. Thankfully, my wife, her whole big family, and I had an amazing weekend in Vermont for my sister-in-law's wedding and I'm back feeling thankful and refreshed!
Now onto tonight's really depressing topic!!!
Bullies suck. I'm not sure if having Tourette's Syndrome made me a more likely target for bullying, but it sure happened. It was worst for me during high school, when two guys who were ostensibly my friends used to pretty much terrorize me every day. Such was my social standing that I actually hung out with my bullies. If that's not the most pathetic sentence I'll ever write, then I'm afraid for what is. It wouldn't occur to me later, after the damage had been done, that the one guy, who we'll call "Mike", because that's what his name was, was the real bully. I think the other guy, who we'll call "Fernando", which is not his real name, only ragged on me because otherwise, Mike's wrath would have fallen on him instead. There's not much I wouldn't have done to someone else to escape my daily-ish harassment, so I find it hard, as an adult, to blame him.
My tics were pretty obvious when I was a teenager. I had a tight, quick head shake that you couldn't miss, my arms flung themselves out pretty frequently, and my vocal grunts and short moans were hard to hide in a classroom environment. It's so hard to think back and re-frame these years of my life with the knowledge that I have TS, mainly because I was one miserable-ass high school student. I was a bad student, I was as socially awkward as they come, I didn't have a girlfriend until senior year, and I was skinny and bad at sports. And a band geek. And I played a lot of video games. I still count the last day of high school as one of the best of my life, because I knew I'd never have to see any of those people, aside from my (normal, non-bully) friends ever again.
The two bullies I mentioned never actually said anything about my tics. I was puzzled as to what I'd ever done to merit this kind of continued abuse. It wasn't until many years later that I learned that Mike was seeing his piece of shit dad beat on his mom a few times a week, and that I was probably just a convenient target for whatever rage that stirred up in him. I've started associating my tics with the feelings of low self-worth (self-worthlessness?) I dealt with and occasionally still do. "How can you accomplish anything great," I ask myself, "when you can't even keep your eyebrows still for a minute?" I think those sorts of feelings made me, and may make other people with TS, more susceptible to bullying and just general mistreatment. If you can't convince yourself of your own worth, how are you supposed to be able to convince someone else?
Much like I believe Mike's bullying stemmed from what he was experiencing at home, I believe that the fact that I became a bully to my own brothers was almost passed down from Mike to me. I make no excuses for my behavior, and I honestly can't decide if the way we roughhoused was normal brother stuff or my working out my aggression on them. All I know is that I think this is the saddest part of bullying situations. This sort of stuff has a lineage that shows itself in bruises and scars, physical and emotional, passed down from bad situation to bad situation. So-and-so made me feel weak and helpless, so I'm going to prove to myself that I'm not by making someone else feel the same way. The worst part of it all is that bullied kids, or kids who have awful situations at home, are the ones who need each other the most and are likely the ones who'll reach out the least.
"I'm an outsider because of A."
"Oh, I'm an outsider because of B!"
"Let's be friends!"
...is an example of a conversation that should happen a lot more than it probably does.
Now onto tonight's really depressing topic!!!
Bullies suck. I'm not sure if having Tourette's Syndrome made me a more likely target for bullying, but it sure happened. It was worst for me during high school, when two guys who were ostensibly my friends used to pretty much terrorize me every day. Such was my social standing that I actually hung out with my bullies. If that's not the most pathetic sentence I'll ever write, then I'm afraid for what is. It wouldn't occur to me later, after the damage had been done, that the one guy, who we'll call "Mike", because that's what his name was, was the real bully. I think the other guy, who we'll call "Fernando", which is not his real name, only ragged on me because otherwise, Mike's wrath would have fallen on him instead. There's not much I wouldn't have done to someone else to escape my daily-ish harassment, so I find it hard, as an adult, to blame him.
My tics were pretty obvious when I was a teenager. I had a tight, quick head shake that you couldn't miss, my arms flung themselves out pretty frequently, and my vocal grunts and short moans were hard to hide in a classroom environment. It's so hard to think back and re-frame these years of my life with the knowledge that I have TS, mainly because I was one miserable-ass high school student. I was a bad student, I was as socially awkward as they come, I didn't have a girlfriend until senior year, and I was skinny and bad at sports. And a band geek. And I played a lot of video games. I still count the last day of high school as one of the best of my life, because I knew I'd never have to see any of those people, aside from my (normal, non-bully) friends ever again.
The two bullies I mentioned never actually said anything about my tics. I was puzzled as to what I'd ever done to merit this kind of continued abuse. It wasn't until many years later that I learned that Mike was seeing his piece of shit dad beat on his mom a few times a week, and that I was probably just a convenient target for whatever rage that stirred up in him. I've started associating my tics with the feelings of low self-worth (self-worthlessness?) I dealt with and occasionally still do. "How can you accomplish anything great," I ask myself, "when you can't even keep your eyebrows still for a minute?" I think those sorts of feelings made me, and may make other people with TS, more susceptible to bullying and just general mistreatment. If you can't convince yourself of your own worth, how are you supposed to be able to convince someone else?
Much like I believe Mike's bullying stemmed from what he was experiencing at home, I believe that the fact that I became a bully to my own brothers was almost passed down from Mike to me. I make no excuses for my behavior, and I honestly can't decide if the way we roughhoused was normal brother stuff or my working out my aggression on them. All I know is that I think this is the saddest part of bullying situations. This sort of stuff has a lineage that shows itself in bruises and scars, physical and emotional, passed down from bad situation to bad situation. So-and-so made me feel weak and helpless, so I'm going to prove to myself that I'm not by making someone else feel the same way. The worst part of it all is that bullied kids, or kids who have awful situations at home, are the ones who need each other the most and are likely the ones who'll reach out the least.
"I'm an outsider because of A."
"Oh, I'm an outsider because of B!"
"Let's be friends!"
...is an example of a conversation that should happen a lot more than it probably does.
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