It Gets Better, my side of things

While we all like to complain about Facebook (those of us that use it), I have to say that the ability it creates to stay connected to people we don't see all that often is amazing. Also, allowing us to reconnect to others is just as amazing. But it also comes at the cost.
The cost is us having to reevaluate our pasts. Do we remember them correctly? How much is made up by how we wanted it to be? But also, it costs the other people we know or knew to find out things about us that they may not have know. Especially for those we haven't seen in ages. How shocking it must be for them.

For me, this holds true for those I'm reconnecting with from my days growing up in Country Club Hills and Jennings, Missouri. Country Club Hills is a small municipality in St. Louis County and is surrounded by Jennings, so they're practically one in the same.
What holds true for me is that as a child who was bullied for being fat and having a lazy eye (birth defect in the upper eyelid where the muscle that keeps the eyelid open wasn't fully formed), what I question is how bad was it for me and was it as bad as I make it out to be in my memories? Now, yes, it happened to me and thus it was bad for me. I don't think as many people where aware of it as I thought though. But it did happen and it got bad and worse year after year. How bad? So bad that I was on the most bottom rung of school social hierarchy. Bullied kids bullied me by the time I got to Junior High. It got to the point that I was so depressed that I was suicidal and even attempted once. But as I was about to slit my wrists, I dropped the knife and just looked into myself and swore that "they" wouldn't win. And they didn't.
Soon after that, I told my mom and among other family events, The Divorce Saga began. If I wasn't going to kill myself, I was going to run off. I had a bag packed for over a year, something else I told my mom that fateful night in late 1993. By this point, I had come out to my mother a year earlier and my depression and suicidal tendencies had no grounds in my sexuality, but in my hate of myself due to my size and eye. I allowed others to determine how I felt about myself and it lead me to nearly taking my own life.
So with this and reconnecting to people on Facebook, I wonder how much of this is/was in my own head. I take it as healthy to question it, but the memories are too strong to ignore as fantasy or a false recollection of faded memories. Maybe it wasn't as visible as I thought it was and I'm good with that. And I've never been the most secure person, so that meant easy pickings in school. But no matter what, that experience made me who I am and I wouldn't change that for anything.
After The Divorce Saga ended and me, my mother and brother moved to Florissant, another municipality in St. Louis County, and this is when I blossomed and grew and started to love me and care about how I was treated by others. I spoke up against remarks by one would-be bully during my first few months in my Freshman year. And it felt good to stand up for me, no one else was going to do it. I made friends, became semi-popular since I wasn't part of any specific clique and was accepted for who and what I was and am after taking my former boyfriend to my Senior Prom. I never judged others during High School and didn't tolerate it from others.
My time in Jennings isn't the best of memories I have, both from school and home, but that time laid the foundation for who I was to be and am continually growing into. In Florissant, I grew into a decent person, though I hid aspects of myself until the later part of my Senior Year. And though I'm 33 and it's coming up on 15 years since I graduated, I still struggle with my self-image and being secure in who I am. But at this point, it's all me and it is a full-time job to fight The Demons (most of them are dead or my friends now anyway). I think I'm physically bigger than what I actually am, which isn't helped much by how people treat full-figured people. Being gay and large in a Ken Doll Standard community isn't a treat either, but I'm doing pretty damn good. Ya know, seeing that I've got The Hubby, The Third (a.k.a. The Collared One) plus a couple guys on the side and all. I've found a segment of the gay male populace that loves the jiggly and loves me for me. It's a nice boost to my self-esteem.

So all-in-all, regardless of how real it was or how visible, I think I've turned out good. Being bullied sucks, but surviving it is kickass! It's also a wonderful thing when you run into a former bully and they apologize for their behavior and ask for forgiveness. That was a mind blowing experience that I'm blessed to have had.
Also, being bullied taught me to love and accept people for who they are, not what I or society want them to be. It taught me to stand up for me since no one else will, but to also be that person who speaks up.

So there it is. Something I've struggled to talk about, but not the post I'm still working on getting out to you. Being bullied isn't kids being kids, simply because of where it can lead. It seems most school shootings by kids are by kids who where bullied. Suicides by bullying aren't acceptable because it shouldn't happen. Teachers see it and need to speak up. Kids see it and need to speak up. Doing so may save a life and heartache for the family they leave behind. But in all that, I wonder what it's like for a bully to discover that one of their victims has taken their own life for how the bully treated them? Also, what is the home life like for a bully? There's so much more to this discussion than what is being talked about. If we want to stop this cycle, then we need to be talking about the parts of it that make us uncomfortable.
Only then can we solve this and grow beyond it.

I'm international?!

Seriously...who's reading this in Kazakstan, Belarus, Indonesia and Brazil??

Entry	Pageviews
United States	24
Russia	9
Indonesia	3
Brazil	2
Belarus	2
Thailand	2
India	1
Kazakhstan	1
Sweden	1

No, seriously, who are you? Comment and let me know because I'm flattered you found me and gave me a chance, even if I've failed it!

Growth is a pain sometimes

I haven't been posting for a bit and though my activity was increasing, I stopped. It's time I let you know why.

For a while now, I was posting poems and newer, enlightened viewpoints. Part of growing and becoming more than what and who I was I guess. Hell, it seems to even have a frienamy and I conversing more! So it all is interesting and a bore at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to no longer be who I was. But there was a certain fun factor to it.
However, that said, I've also gotten to find more about me and who I am and that I can no be able to admit things to myself that I couldn't have dreamed of just a couple years ago. The main being that I've got to learn to let go and not hold a grudge forever. I'm excelled at it, but that doesn't make it a strength. I've also learned forgiveness truly is about me and not the other person. Even when I'm the one who needs forgiveness from me the most.
I'm ready for further forgiveness and admission to who and what I am and was. Blogging has become a major factor in this. To reading older posts (who was that guy?!) and comments (and related Flame Wars) to where I am now. It's all cathartic. And WAY cheaper than a therapist. Besides, once you break a therapist, you find that the profession is sorely lacking in stamina.
So for a more serious note, there is one thing I want to talk about but I'm not ready. The time is coming and close, but I'm not there yet. I want to get it out but there's still a block holding me in place. And I'm taking that as a warning that I'm not ready. Hell, look how long it took me to confront and forgive my Aunt Linda!
I'll get there, in my own time and my own way. But I'm not ready to admit that I'm ready to share who and what I am without shame or fear. I only hope that the world is ready for it. I've spent far too long masking me that I'm not sure that some are ready for The Real Erick and not the illusion I've spent years crafting.

We'll see, won't we?