Bitterness, bullying, and breaking the circle.

I was seven the first time I'd had such a horrid day at school that I told my mother I wished I was dead.

Seven.

My first therapist used to put me through forty-minute long interrogations as to how exactly it was I was "bringing it all on myself," as if the fact that I didn't fit was an act of willful noncompliance on my part that could be broken by explaining to me, repeatedly, that I would have to change if I wanted the other kids to stop holding me down in red-ant nests for fun. (It utterly shocks me how many actual instances of assault I underwent as a kid that nobody did anything about.)

My father, who is an exceptionally gentle fellow and not prone to violent talk, much less actual violence, (and who hates conflict so much he'll tie himself in knots trying to please everyone, so that he took this much initiative shows how bad he thought it was) eventually told my mom (who didn't like that the therapist wasn't getting results, but was too timid to tell him he was doing a lousy job) that there were two options: we found me someone new to see, because clearly any seven year old who talked about wishing she didn't exist the way other kids talked about wanting a new Barbie needed SOMEONE professionally trained to try and talk her into believing she had a right to keep taking up space, or he would be forced to punch him in the eye at their next conference.

I have since learned that this was considered the appropriate way to deal with bullying in the early eighties. You blamed the victim, because it was (conceptually anyway) easier to try and get them to adapt in ways that would render them less objectionable than it was to try and deal with the bullying behavior. Even as a little girl I thought this sounded bass-ackwards: it didn't seem fair to me that *I* had to change who *I* was, even though I wasn't hurting anyone, in hopes that the children who were so very cruel to me target someone else--that my goal should be to pass my tormentors along like an evil hand-me-down, that the best I could hope for was to pass the pain along like a bad penny.

They--my teachers, the professional staff at the school, most of the parents, MY parents--weren't unaware of what was happening. They just chose to reframe it as my fault, and then yell at me for being "self centered" when I became mortally afraid that I was somehow responsible for all evil in the world.

You know what? I got through it. I got through it damaged, and I got through it with emotional scars that I'm still trying to let go of. My mother once asked me if I took any pleasure in the era of Facebook of getting to see how much "better" I've done for myself than my tormentors. I did do "better"--if by completing both college and a professional degree with some amount of distinction is "better"--than nearly all of them. I take no pleasure in it. Why should I? The damage they did to me can't be fixed by one-upsmanship. I'm still hurt and they probably don't even remember, judging by the "oh, so nice to see you doing so fine!" comments they leave on my Wall.

And do bullies outgrow the behavior? Are they just "good kids"? Look around you and look at how many people seem not to understand that their behavior has actual consequences and that other people have the same feelings, hopes, fears, and human integrity that they themselves feel they do, and try to tell me again that letting bullies behave so badly they scar some of their victims for life and drive others to their deaths doesn't really hurt anyone.

Consoling yourself that a bully is "just a good kid really" victimizes the bully by letting them learn that treating others in horrifying ways is fine as long as they don't have power, and victimizes the bully again by telling them that their pain doesn't matter enough for you to inconvenience themselves enough to intervene.

victimizes the *victim* again. Not the bully again.