This reminds me of a bully in my middle school who used to enjoy punching boys in the arm really hard. On his busy days he'd punch dozens of arms, much to the joy of his buddies. This punching included my skinny, boney arm at times. One day I saw him walking in the hall doing his usual punching, this time with a d-cell battery inside his fist. He was coming my way. I decided I would stand my ground that day, even though it would get me killed. His movement toward me seemed to last an hour, although since my decision to fight it was maybe two more punched innocents and 10 seconds. What would I have done in response? Punch him back? Push him? I don't know. My body was filled with adrenaline-terror as he approached. I thought I was facing death (such is the terrible impact bullies have on their peers). Then he walked past me, nodded, and entered a classroom. For whatever reason he chose not to punch me that day. I remember afterward, standing there shaking and crying. As the adrenaline drained from me, I felt so angry and hateful toward him. Over time, that anger has become compassion. Like many of your bullies, this guy suffered in his twenties from addiction, divorce and loneliness. He worked for a landscaper until 31 and I don't know what ever came of him. I wish him peace and wellness.
Growing up on the streets of upper Manhattan in the 1950’s I experienced or witnessed many acts of this type of bullying, with similar results as many of them didn’t live long lives
This is so powerful and so important and so timely as the white nationalist domestic terrorist bullies become more open and virulent. What happened to the bullies? Is there a way to mend/heal it?
That’s a good question. I think the loss of so many industrial jobs in the United States over the last few decades is part of it. A man who makes less money than his father did is going to be angry about that.
Boys and violence. We test each other, torture each other. We're told to 'be a man' when we don't yet have the tools, strength or courage to do that. We are victims and perpetrators. We persecute and are persecuted. We store up every hurt, slight, and injury and either pass the violence down the line or learn to carry it, locked deep within us. We try to drown it with drink or confuse it with drugs. It breaks us. It shames us. We carry it inside us like the jagged grain of sand inside an oyster.
Deny it exists and it can become the source of rot in our spirit. It can poison us, turn us into the vector for more pain, more hurt, more suffering. Like a parasite metastasizing inside of us, sending forth a plague of spores into the future generations.
But it can also transform us. We can hold that pain, squeezed into our fist until the blood flows and the pain no longer holds power over us. We can grow past the hurt and into strength. The strength to be kind, merciful and fearless. When we've walked through the shadow, been transformed by the fire - maybe only then will we have the courage to Love.
Thank you for sharing this vulnerable and horrid time.. This could be a national conversation on violence perpetuation, but I deeply resonate with your kind question. It is one I use myself, a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse...abuse is learned...so who was/is teaching children to hurt each other, but especially our boys who may have mistaken coming of age for harming others? Healing to you, Sherman. Thank you for sharing your stories, your processes.
Thank you. This kind of violence spans the racial/cultural/economic spectrum. But based on our particular politics, we often focus on just one variety of violence.
It is a painful old question: do we need to forget, in order to heal? Do we need to forgive, in order to heal? Do we need to forget in order to forgive, or can we forgive while remembering? Scientists, your therapist for example, answer these questions in their own way, looking for the best rational road to healing. Maybe we can heal while remembering, by holding different, opposing images in our minds. The bullying is remembered, but the bully is seen to have been himself a victim of his own demons, having lived a life filled with strife and anger, and a life that ended early.
Our minds, when left to their own devices, unguided by therapists and other helpers, have their own instinctive approach to healing, etched through a combination of forces ingrained over millennia of evolution. Some of these ingrained healing tools work extremely well in the modern world, others less so. The forgetting is in part a form of anesthesia.
While therapists try to figure out what works best, poets remind us of our core wounds:
Everywhere you go, men murder men.
As do women…
I read a book not long ago about a world with sleeping giant dragons and confused forgetful knights, where peace is everywhere, simply because people can no longer remember anything. When the fog of forgetting dissipates, the anger and revenge return along with the memories, and peace disappears.
I have my own similar tale of woe. For years, after a childhood lived in a police state, I had no stomach for keeping current with the news. I used to cheat, by getting the short version of the news from friends. Nor did I remember often, after I escaped from that world, the horrors I knew as a child. The trouble with this forgetting is that, in the real world, something always awakens these painful monster memories. For me it is the recent awakening of the old Soviet horror. Maybe I too should try to hold opposing images in my broken, angry brain: Tolstoy and Putin speak the same language. Although I doubt that Putin ever held War and Peace in his hands.
Bullying is pretty universal. On social media, it is common, if not universal. But not just humans, egrets will kill and push their siblings from the nest. In humans, I think, it depends on family values; the father, for example, to set an example, how he treats you. I think everyone is involved in a bit of bullying. My father gave me 25 cents if I could do a number of pushups. Nothing to do with bullying, but preparation for the unknown. I don't think most children don't tell their fathers about being bullied, not because of shame, but because most children share very little of their personal pain. So you never bullied, probably because you honored your father.
Thank you, Sherman. I am so glad you remembered because remembering brings new healing again. It is my understanding that I seemed to have forgotten things in order to survive them. I began remembering when I had about a year of sobriety and now I have 34 years and I am still uncovering and remembering. So much healing. And telling is liberating! It is why I have read your writing ever since your Business of Fancydancing came out in ‘92. I was four years sober then and you were telling, you were telling what needed to be told. Please keep telling! Thanks, man.
There needs to be something besides the heart thing to click--a something-in-my-gut-leaps-to-recognize this. A gut symbol. That penultimate paragraph just chills me still.
This reminds me of a bully in my middle school who used to enjoy punching boys in the arm really hard. On his busy days he'd punch dozens of arms, much to the joy of his buddies. This punching included my skinny, boney arm at times. One day I saw him walking in the hall doing his usual punching, this time with a d-cell battery inside his fist. He was coming my way. I decided I would stand my ground that day, even though it would get me killed. His movement toward me seemed to last an hour, although since my decision to fight it was maybe two more punched innocents and 10 seconds. What would I have done in response? Punch him back? Push him? I don't know. My body was filled with adrenaline-terror as he approached. I thought I was facing death (such is the terrible impact bullies have on their peers). Then he walked past me, nodded, and entered a classroom. For whatever reason he chose not to punch me that day. I remember afterward, standing there shaking and crying. As the adrenaline drained from me, I felt so angry and hateful toward him. Over time, that anger has become compassion. Like many of your bullies, this guy suffered in his twenties from addiction, divorce and loneliness. He worked for a landscaper until 31 and I don't know what ever came of him. I wish him peace and wellness.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your piece.
Growing up on the streets of upper Manhattan in the 1950’s I experienced or witnessed many acts of this type of bullying, with similar results as many of them didn’t live long lives
It is generational.
This is so powerful and so important and so timely as the white nationalist domestic terrorist bullies become more open and virulent. What happened to the bullies? Is there a way to mend/heal it?
That’s a good question. I think the loss of so many industrial jobs in the United States over the last few decades is part of it. A man who makes less money than his father did is going to be angry about that.
Boys and violence. We test each other, torture each other. We're told to 'be a man' when we don't yet have the tools, strength or courage to do that. We are victims and perpetrators. We persecute and are persecuted. We store up every hurt, slight, and injury and either pass the violence down the line or learn to carry it, locked deep within us. We try to drown it with drink or confuse it with drugs. It breaks us. It shames us. We carry it inside us like the jagged grain of sand inside an oyster.
Deny it exists and it can become the source of rot in our spirit. It can poison us, turn us into the vector for more pain, more hurt, more suffering. Like a parasite metastasizing inside of us, sending forth a plague of spores into the future generations.
But it can also transform us. We can hold that pain, squeezed into our fist until the blood flows and the pain no longer holds power over us. We can grow past the hurt and into strength. The strength to be kind, merciful and fearless. When we've walked through the shadow, been transformed by the fire - maybe only then will we have the courage to Love.
That is a beautiful response, Tim.
Thank you for sharing this vulnerable and horrid time.. This could be a national conversation on violence perpetuation, but I deeply resonate with your kind question. It is one I use myself, a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse...abuse is learned...so who was/is teaching children to hurt each other, but especially our boys who may have mistaken coming of age for harming others? Healing to you, Sherman. Thank you for sharing your stories, your processes.
Thank you. This kind of violence spans the racial/cultural/economic spectrum. But based on our particular politics, we often focus on just one variety of violence.
It is a painful old question: do we need to forget, in order to heal? Do we need to forgive, in order to heal? Do we need to forget in order to forgive, or can we forgive while remembering? Scientists, your therapist for example, answer these questions in their own way, looking for the best rational road to healing. Maybe we can heal while remembering, by holding different, opposing images in our minds. The bullying is remembered, but the bully is seen to have been himself a victim of his own demons, having lived a life filled with strife and anger, and a life that ended early.
Our minds, when left to their own devices, unguided by therapists and other helpers, have their own instinctive approach to healing, etched through a combination of forces ingrained over millennia of evolution. Some of these ingrained healing tools work extremely well in the modern world, others less so. The forgetting is in part a form of anesthesia.
While therapists try to figure out what works best, poets remind us of our core wounds:
Everywhere you go, men murder men.
As do women…
I read a book not long ago about a world with sleeping giant dragons and confused forgetful knights, where peace is everywhere, simply because people can no longer remember anything. When the fog of forgetting dissipates, the anger and revenge return along with the memories, and peace disappears.
I have my own similar tale of woe. For years, after a childhood lived in a police state, I had no stomach for keeping current with the news. I used to cheat, by getting the short version of the news from friends. Nor did I remember often, after I escaped from that world, the horrors I knew as a child. The trouble with this forgetting is that, in the real world, something always awakens these painful monster memories. For me it is the recent awakening of the old Soviet horror. Maybe I too should try to hold opposing images in my broken, angry brain: Tolstoy and Putin speak the same language. Although I doubt that Putin ever held War and Peace in his hands.
As I’ve often read, women and girls tend to use emotional instead of physical violence. I wonder about the scars that creates.
Oh the tales I could tell...
Yes, the scars run very deep, so deep that they sometimes render us mute with bewilderment and pain.
Yes.
Bullying is pretty universal. On social media, it is common, if not universal. But not just humans, egrets will kill and push their siblings from the nest. In humans, I think, it depends on family values; the father, for example, to set an example, how he treats you. I think everyone is involved in a bit of bullying. My father gave me 25 cents if I could do a number of pushups. Nothing to do with bullying, but preparation for the unknown. I don't think most children don't tell their fathers about being bullied, not because of shame, but because most children share very little of their personal pain. So you never bullied, probably because you honored your father.
Thank you, Sherman. I am so glad you remembered because remembering brings new healing again. It is my understanding that I seemed to have forgotten things in order to survive them. I began remembering when I had about a year of sobriety and now I have 34 years and I am still uncovering and remembering. So much healing. And telling is liberating! It is why I have read your writing ever since your Business of Fancydancing came out in ‘92. I was four years sober then and you were telling, you were telling what needed to be told. Please keep telling! Thanks, man.
Thank you for being such a longtime fan.
There needs to be something besides the heart thing to click--a something-in-my-gut-leaps-to-recognize this. A gut symbol. That penultimate paragraph just chills me still.
Thank you. It’s a painful memory, more in thinking about them than me. I’m alive.
That comes through, so much.