Perhaps the saddest reality about the recent wave of youth suicides due to bullying is that it has revealed a lack of active involvement in prevention by adults.
Time and time again, I have heard distraught parents say in interviews that they told school officials about their children being bullied, but little or nothing was done.
Bullying is a poison that corrodes the spirit and emotions of its victims. The spirit and emotions of human beings are sensitive and actually act as a protective “skin” over a person’s sense of self. Harassment, which can be physical or verbal, splashes the person’s sense of self, which is very delicate, and can permanently corrode that same sense, leading victims to anguish, despair, a diminished sense of self himself and, in the worst case, to suicide. .
This corrosion is not unlike the process that occurs if a person accidentally drinks a corrosive substance, such as antifreeze. Long after the victim has been treated, residual burns remain on their internal organs and a burn hole in the esophagus may result.
Or the effects of bullying can be compared to what happens when one is badly burned. Severe and persistent bullying is like a third degree burn, burning skin to muscle and bone. The skin is the largest organ in the human body and its job is to protect our internal organs and structures. A severe burn removes the protection and in addition to severe pain, the victim is at risk of infection.
Intimidation results in unprotected spirits, subject to infection and, as in the case of physical burns, the spiritual and emotional burns that result in infection all too often lead to death.
We have a tendency to lose the importance of one’s spirit. A person with a downcast spirit finds himself hampered and crippled, relying on poisonous actions and words as a measure of his own worth. They have a hard time believing in themselves and because they are hurt and filled with hatred from others, they attack others or go into a protective shell.
No amount of love can get them out of that shell. Like a physical burn, these spiritual and emotional burns take a long time to heal and leave hideous scars.
A lot of attention has been, or is being, paid to gay kids who have been and are being bullied, but the truth is that all kinds of kids who are different or perceived to be different are bullied. A father who defended his daughter who was being bullied recently appeared on television. His daughter has cerebral palsy and she was so traumatized by the bullying that she no longer wanted to ride the school bus.
The father was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.
Children are not the only ones who experience bullying. Adults are bullied too, perhaps the same adults who were bullied as children. You don’t really say anything if you’re bullied as an adult; you put up with it for whatever reason you feel you must put up with, and you try to carry on. To make matters worse, some adults participate in bullying children, which in effect encourages the children who bully to continue doing so.
The difference between being bullied now and, say, 20 years ago, is the Internet in general and social media in particular. There is a strange power that the written word has; a caustic, toxic email can cause the deepest anguish, and if a toxic message is posted on Facebook or Twitter, hundreds of people, known and unknown, immediately jump into the fray.
The burning of the harassed person’s spirit begins and burns them to the bone and muscle.
We all do better when we know more. I guess a lot of adults know better, having survived bullying. Adults, then, who have been to the fire should be active participants in putting out the fires that bullies are starting today, or, better yet, active in preventing fires.
If ever there was a need for people to embrace diversity, it’s now. Despite the complaints of some who “want their country back,” neither the United States nor the world will ever be the same. Homosexuality will never again be ignored by those who want to ignore it. Violence in the form of intimidation against gay youth and adults is not going to make gay people “go away.” The world is making room for those who are not healthy, straight, white males.
If adults cannot and do not step up, teaching their children that bullying is wrong and reminding themselves that bullying is not a sign of power but represents the despicable form of weakness, the wave of suicides will only will increase. Children, adolescents and young adults need us, who now know more, to do better.
We don’t need another person’s spirit burned to the core. No other. Enough already.