The Cycle of Bullying and Violence

All throughout my childhood, I was bullied. It started in Elementary School and went on through High School. My Sophomore year of High School, I adopted a Gothic look and lifestyle, knowing that it would scare off and intimidate a lot of the assholes at the Catholic School I went to, but it was a lonely existence. And the behind-the-back, subtle jabs never stopped, even after the overt harassment was curbed.

That kind of thing wears on you. Day after day, week after week, year after year. I slipped into a serious depression in Middle School that still plagues me to this day, albeit much less than it was back then. High school was the worst; I knew, by that point, that I was so weirdly *different* from the rest of the world that it didn't matter where I went or what I did; I would perpetually be the Outcast Freak.

I got into one actual fight the entire time I was in school. Another classmate, one of the people who was preppy and wealthy enough to rank at the bottom of the preppy social ladder, liked to make himself feel big by picking on me. I finally had enough of it, and encouraged by several other classmates, challenged him to a fight. I thumped him several times, back behind the school, he slapped the glasses off my face and ran away... and then I never was bothered by him again.

It. Was. LIBERATING. You can't imagine the rush of knowing that I could physically make someone STOP treating me like that, after a childhood that de-emphasized violent and angry solutions and the repeated lesson from the majority of the authority figures in my life that "violence is never the answer". Not only had I found a situation where violence was useful outside of pure self-defense, but it felt good to have that power. After that fight, combined with my Gothic appearance and manner (and the Colombine shooting, while heinous and tragic, helped scare the piss out of my tormentors further), the majority of the outright harassment stopped dead. But the whispers and rumors never did, nor did the social ostracism. By the time I graduated High School, after years of internalized self-loathing, a pitch-black worldview of society and how horribly I'd felt it treated me, and perpetual labeling of myself from myself and others as the Outcast Freak, my flashbacks had already started. It may sound laughable, but the torment and mind-fuckery and straight-up cruelty that I endured through my school days finally took their toll on my mind. The flashbacks started shortly before my High School Graduation. I sank into an even deeper depression than ever before the next year while away at College, and ended up dropping out. After visiting several psych doctors and therapists, I was diagnosed as borderline-PTSD, not quite a full-blown case, as I could (and still can) usually shake myself out of them after a few moments. But the damage was done, and I continue to live with it to this day.

I was tormented all throughout my school days, and was continually told by authority figures in all but the most extreme cases to endure it. There were a number of times when I finally tried to take action for myself to stave off the bullies and cruel language, and usually ended up getting into trouble for it myself. It was a constant no-win situation for me; my complaints were responded to with mere verbal reprimands for the bullies, which did NOTHING to end the problem and usually only made it worse. Any time I acted out in an effort to take matters into my own hands and scare them off, I was punished for my outbursts.

I consider myself lucky that I've always been intelligent enough to think ahead far enough to realize that the sociocultural minefield of childhood school days was not a template for the entire future. I endured, and ended up slightly broken, but never lost sight of the fact that what the school councilors and my parents and my psychiatrist told me, that life after School would get better, was probably true.

I can easily see how people like TJ Lane, or Harris and Klebold, or any number of other rampage shooters could just become overwhelmed by anger and despair that they just gave up hope. While I can obviously recognize that it's a destructive and Violet way of thinking, the desire to destroy others along with yourself, because you've been driven to a point where it seems and feels like the only worthwhile and/or meaningful act left for you to commit in order to tell and show the world how you feel inside, is not an alien mindset to me. I just had the foresight and wisdom to realize the folly of such actions and the toll it would take on the people I did still care about, the mental fortitude to understand the greater ramifications of such an act, and an intense dislike of firearms stemming from how I was brought up.

When I read TJ Lane's writing, something about it resonates with me. I recognize a quiet and awkward kid who internalizes his pain and torment. It's almost like looking in the mirror at a younger version of myself, the "nice" Goth kid who smiles at the people who will actually talk to him without looking down on him, while harboring the secret and ultimately self-destructive rage and loathing toward a world and the people in it that constantly give him the message, spoken and unspoken, that he's powerless to stop the barbs. This Is Just How It Is.

And then I look at my stable home life compared to Lane's history of family problems, and I can't help but think, "But for the grace of GOD go I..."

Because, as I discovered accidentally...

Sometimes all it takes to stave off the brunt of the bullying is a single act of violence. When nothing else worked, and nobody else would help, throwing a few punches and kicks did more for my mental and emotional well-being than any counselling session or the assurances from teachers, parents, and therapists that it would get better ever did. My home life was stable enough that I got enough love and support from there to keep myself from going over that final, irreversible edge. TJ Lane did not have as fortunate circumstances.

Want to end bullying and prevent any more school shootings related to such things? There's no easy fix. Stop fostering a sociocultural environment in which bullies are essentially given a free pass to torment, where the only fear they have is the occasional verbal rebuke from an authority figure that their rebellious teenage brains likely don't take seriously anyway. Do away with the Jock culture that puts sports players on a pedestal and renders them virtually immune or mostly untouchable out of a desire to keep them happy and/or in the Next Big Game (which punishments for bullying could potentially affect). Dismantle this Us vs. Them social mentality that the current system fosters generationally, start educating kids about tolerance and empathy at an earlier age, and then for the love of GOD, enforce it.

Because sooner or later, a lot of bullying victims discover how easy of a solution violence can be for their problems.