Dysfunction

Growing up in a dysfunctional family makes it hard to sort out just what dysfunction is.  You know the aspects of your childhood you don't like, the things you promise yourself will be different when you're older, but are you really able to distinguish them from what becomes routine in your adult life?

For that question I don't have the answer.  I struggle with this situation daily.  Some days my bad choices are few and far between but other days I make one bad choice after another.  What do you do?

Keep struggling through.  Keep trying to achieve a better balance in your life.  Keep trying to be less dysfunctional.  Seek professional help.  Admit your mistakes, don't be afraid of them.  Learn from every wrong choice, bad situation or unsavoury person you encounter.  Eventually something has to stick.  Eventually you should start to see just where it is you go wrong and make a conscious effort to choose better next time.

Maybe you use harsh words like your parents did.  Maybe you let the same "bad" men into your life that your mother let into hers.  Maybe you fall for every scam hoping each time that the next person will be honest.  Whatever it is, learn from it.  Use that lesson to grow your self esteem, self preservation and self respect.  Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, I'll take out my switchblade and cut you.

It's time to realize that we're adults now.  We have the power to make others feel the way we did in our childhoods or we have the power to lift others up when they're already feeling that way.  We have the power to choose who we let into our lives and we have the ability to say "no".

Open yourself up to the universe but don't be a sucker.

Bully or Bullied?

Bullying is a touchy subject at this point in time.  Everyone wants to stop it.  The question is, can it be stopped?

Bullying happens for a variety of reasons.  The most important one being what goes on in the child’s home.  And to date, no one really wants to get involved in what happens in the child’s home, they’re only concerned that it stops on the playground.  I see it as an impossibility, hard to hear, right?

Experience has taught me much about bullying.  You see I was both bullied and a bully.  I lived on both sides of the fence. 

Some herd animals bully, they pick on the weakest member.  The link that weakens the herd and brings danger to their survival, the one that gets eaten first by predators.  Humans do this too in a way.  Unfortunately humans are both predator and prey.

Firstly a child can be taught by their parents that it is ok to say derogatory things to another human being whether its race, gender, learning disability, physical disability, body weight or looks by the parent doing it first in front of the child.  If the parent is surrounded by friends who laugh and agree with that parent show the child that this is how we relate to one another, this is how our friends think we’re cool, and this is how we show we are the king of the jungle.  That child takes that information to school and then begins to bully on those weaker children in order to be “cool” in front of his friends and to gain a higher status.  Unfortunately the child doesn’t have anyone to teach them that this hurts the other child they’re bullying.  That it has a very negative impact on the bullied child’s life and that in time it will have an overall negative impact on themselves.

Secondly you have the child who is bullied.  Usually they already have low self esteem.  Perhaps their parents are not providing a nurturing home for them.  Perhaps the parents are low income, poor education, could be alcoholic, and bullied themselves, mental health issues, abusive.  The child could have a high intelligence, physically awkward, body dysmorphic disorder, introverted, lost a parent or loved one.  There are just so many variables it’s impossible to tell.  For whatever reason this child is already insecure and in desperate need of nurturing.  Because they are different, and by different I mean they are not overloaded with self confidence or taught that one day we shed the skin of childhood and none of it matters, they become the punching bag.

So now you have your bully and your bullied.  It usually starts with taunts.  The bullied walks by and the bully shouts derogatory comments about how they look, smell, how fat or how thin they are, how stupid or smart, etc.  The bullied takes it because that is what life has taught them.  It happens every day for the next week, month, year.  The bullied never rises to the occasion and the bully gets angrier as he tries to show off for his friends expressing he is the biggest, baddest, coolest guy around.  At some point the bully may start physically attacking the bullied.  A little shove or shake trying to get their attention.  Not realizing of course that the bullied has been thinking of their bully 24 hours a day since it all began.  The bullied may shake them off and walk or run away.  This confrontation will continue the same way the initial taunting did.

Most bullied kids imagine getting the better of their bully in one way or another.  This retribution depends on the childhood the bullied child has.  If their life is full of physical abuse they may start throwing punches.  If their world is theft, they may steal from the bully in secret.  Sometimes their world contains gun violence.  And this is what we as a society focus on.

What happens when this bullied child, previously meek and mild mannered, usually polite finally fights back?  He becomes a bully.  He finally has the courage to stand up for himself or herself and all of the weeks, months, years of torment come raging from him.  Usually focused on the bully and the bullies friends who laughed along, they get tired of being the punch line and just start punching.

When you’re bullied there is something freeing about running after and physically assaulting your bully.  Taking that stand, fighting back, gaining courage and self respect in the process is sometimes what the bullied child needs.  I believe, depending on the childhood they have, over taking their bully may be the only way they can find courage and self respect.  It’s easier to fight another child than it is to fight your abusive parent.

What about abusive teachers in our schools?  What about the ones that choose favorites based on family incomes and the likelihood they’ll “go somewhere”.  What about the teachers that constantly pick on the quiet child at the back of the classroom?  Are they educated on how not to bully their students?  Are they able, as adults, to refrain from verbally attacking the fidgeting child in the corner?  I do not believe so.  Instead, they bring that child forward to sit up front for the entire class to watch, have them stand in a corner, or simply expel them from school.  Yet they’re the loudest when it comes to ending bullying because they fear for themselves.  A raging child will swing out at whoever is hurting them, regardless of title.

I have often wondered how much attention would be paid to this subject if none of the bullied children had spoken their rage with a gun.  I think society would still quietly sit by.

The Love Game

We, as people, form bonds with others for a number of activities in life.  We form emotional love bonds with others and create a family where there was none.  We have partnerships in business built on trust.  We make friends who we can trust, love, confide in and share secrets with.

When relationships don’t go our way or move on our schedule we throw tantrums.  Some of us break down into tears, some tell you to go away, and some do things to destroy trust and confidence in your idea of who they are. 

To fully grasp this imagine yourself as a 5 year old in your favourite store.  Imagine that your mom gives you a toy to quiet you when you get there.  You walk around, holding that toy for hours and when you believe you are going home with that new favourite toy, you mom puts it back on the shelf and says “come on, let’s go”.  How do you feel?  Sad, angry, hurt?  And what do you do?  You cry, you scream, you kick your feet.  You must have that toy!  That is how we deal with difficult relationships and difficult love.  That is how we act when the relationship doesn’t go our way, when we don’t get exactly what we want. 

Instead of our mature adult mind realizing that “if I want it I can have it but I will need to work for it” we simply throw our hands in the air, we declare that it is impossible, there are too many barriers, that it is just too difficult.  We claim that with love comes great sacrifice and that ending the relationship is for the betterment of the other person.  What we are really saying is “Im scared.  I’m afraid.  I don’t want to work this hard and lose”.  Relax.  It’s a normal feeling.  The mature and adult thing to do is to find a way to make things work, if that is in fact what you really want.  Don’t run. 

Nothing in life is free.  Love requires sacrifice and commitment and the person you choose to be with deserves all of your effort and energy into making it work.  But most importantly your thoughts, fears and actions (inactions) manifest the kind of relationships you have.  If you believe it will not work, it will not.  If you put all of your effort into it and believe it will, it just might.  Having hope that things will work out allows you to say “I did my best, I tried my hardest”. 

In•tent /inˈtent/

Noun:	Intention or purpose
Adjective:	Resolved or determined to do (something): "intent on achieving efficiency".
Synonyms:	purpose - aim - design - object - view - goal - thought

Our entire lives are shaped on intent.  We are first taught to think before we speak, know what we want to say before we say it.  This concept then shapes our entire lives.  Those people who learn this basic lesson tend to be well spoken, thoughtful, and live with purpose.  They never choose their words lightly and the meaning behind them, not always obvious to everyone, is well thought out.  People who speak with purpose not only think of the words, but the situation and the outcome of using their chosen words.

Sometimes the words they chose are not large, sometimes they lack social etiquette, or grace and sometimes the words are mean.  They are always well thought out, achieving a desired effect.  You see, words are powerful, they can love and they can hurt.

Writing your words down for someone else to read is always an iffy game.  We each read someone else’s words with our own voice in our heads, contrary to popular movie making belief, and that is where our words take on new meaning and become something other than what we intended.  We may write something down while crying because it makes us sad and another person may read it with anger or vice versa. 

The only cure is to speak, don’t write.  Though this is not always possible, and leads to more fighting and more arguments if the person you’re trying to communicate with doesn’t want to hear what you are trying to say.  In which case, might I suggest just letting it go?  Be confident in what you tried to get across, feel sad that they do not have the capability to understand and just let it go.  You’ll drive yourself insane if you don’t.  And always, always remember that once the words are spoken you can never take them back.  They may float in the air for an eternity or be etched in someone else’s mind, but they’re always there.

Karma Does Get You

You may believe that things in your life are difficult.  They could feel out of control or just be too much for you to handle at this present moment.  Major areas in our lives are family, work, relationship or friends.  These can bring us the highest highs and the lowest lows.  We can be trying our hardest to make these areas and relationships work but feel only disaster and doom are in our future.  What do we do?

The easiest choice is to run, ignore, hide.  We may try to confront an issue or person head on and be left with no more than that brick wall feeling.  Trying to make someone understand your position can be a lot more difficult than it seems.  When you’re left with no other option, you’ve done your best to handle things in an adult and mature manner, what do you do?

You run.  You turn your back on whatever it is.  You stop talking to that person, take yourself out of that situation, sometimes you even get a new job or make a new life for yourself.  Is it cowardly?  No.  You are being a mature person; you are using your brain, your past experience and your sense of self preservation to prevent a bad situation from getting worse.  You are saving yourself, your sanity and your future. 

Don’t worry.  That thing you call life or karma or destiny will catch up with you.  At some point you will have to confront that which you ran from.  Let us all hope that when we do confront our past we have mastered our present.  That we have evolved a tiny bit maybe even learned from that life lesson and are ready to once again be adult and mature. 

The Friendship Tug-O-War

The adage “it’s a two way street” seems a little wrong in my interpretation.  A two way street means that you are constantly passing each other in opposite directions, never quite meeting, never quite touching and when it comes to dealing with others, never truly agreeing.

I like to think of friendship as an eternal game of tug-of-war.  In order for there to never be a loser each side has to exert the same force.  Each side must pull or face being dragged down.

The idea that true friends are those who do not judge, who do not harbor ill will, who respect your boundaries and are there for you in your time of need is a selfish person’s idealistic view.  In order for a fulfilling friendship both parties must not judge, must not harbor ill will, must respect each other’s boundaries and must always remember that  although they are friends, like any relationship they will have ups and downs.

As in any relationship when one person begins to demand things of another, fails to listen to what is being said, disrespects boundaries and acts irrationally whether they judge the other person harshly or disregard what their friend has said completely the relationship begins to break down.

With friends a subtle change in behavior is all that is required.  We get to know each other so well over time that we are able to pick up on the invisible hint that not all is well in la-la-friendship land anymore.   Voice inflection, absence, lack of communication, the list could go on and on. 

What do you do?  This person you have been friends with has changed.  They are different.  They are no longer someone you would want to be friends with but you’ve known them for so long.  Do you ride it out?  Do you continue to deal with someone who is unrecognizable to you?  Do you continue to force a friendship with this person or do you cut them loose?  Do you let them move on with their life and you with yours?

Any relationship has complications and may end.  Unfortunately there is no word to describe dissolving a friendship the way DIVORCE describes the end of a marriage.  And rarely do two friends agree on why to end a relationship.  Usually one person is left wondering what the other person’s deal is after a big blow out fight.

I do believe that people enter your life for a reason.  Each person you meet in life offers you a lesson, it’s up to you to learn that lesson or not.  It’s up to you to decide who deserves to be in your life, it’s up to you to make sure they are worthy of your loyalty, your trust and your friendship.  It’s also ok to love someone but not like them and to set them free. 

You Deserve What You Get

If you let people into your life that hurt or mistreat you and you keep them in your life, you deserve to be hurt and mistreated.  Do not whine about it.  You asked for it.

If you sit and wonder why you let them treat you this way but you make no effort to extricate them from your life, you deserve to be miserable.

You are allowing them into your life, your sacred sanctum, and you alone are allowing them to abuse, manipulate, make you miserable, and have a place in your life.  You are choosing to be a victim.

Do not call your friends and whine about how miserable you are, how sad you are, how unhappy you are.  By allowing this person into your life you are sending a direct message to all of your friends and everyone who cares for you and that message is “I do not care about myself; I do not possess self love.  I need to be miserable to be happy and I find my personal value in being an abuse victim.”

When you sit and wonder why people have stopped trying to give you advice or help or lift you up when you are sinking down, remind yourself “I have chosen this life, I have allowed this person to treat me like I am garbage because I personally believe I am garbage, this is who I enjoy being.”

As days, weeks and years go by and friends stop coming to visit or calling you remember that you choose to be miserable and regardless of the old adage company does not like misery.

Sometime, when you’ve had enough of your own tears, your own mean spirit, your own self loathing and you surface to the realm of the living and realize that life is not perfect but all we have is what we make it and surviving life is about removing those who tear you down, those who try to harm you and those who use you as their personal stepping stone to happiness, perhaps then, and only then are you ready to benefit from the love and comfort a true friend has to offer.  After all, if you’re letting one person treat you like dirt on their shoe, it’s hard to believe that not everyone sees you that way.

Until that day…..