Alrighty folks, I need to vent and you get the venting.
Dear random guys on Facebook,
I did NOT ask you to love me, I didn't, not once, at all, EVER. Nope I accepted your friends request on Facebook, this does not in anyway invite you to hit on me or declare some kind of ownership over me. Here's the thing, I like playing games on Facebook, they are fun for me, they allow me to get away for a bit from work and homework and just do something completely stupid and meaningless.Some of these games in order to get anywhere with them and not go crazy you need other gamers, and so I have added a lot of people to my FB account that I can game with. Some of these people have actually become friends just because we connect on certain things. I enjoy reading about peoples lives and I like being able to share whats on my heart and mind in a way that is quick easy and works with my schedule and brain.
Yes I posted pictures of myself, mainly because I have a whole lot of family all over the world and I know it is fun for them to see whats new with me and to see pictures from time to time. You posting nice messages on these pictures is sweet, and I thank you for that, but I didn't ask for it. You posting on my posts and links is sweet, it is always nice to find other people who have the same thoughts or like the same things I do, that is cool. You then writing me a private message declaring your love for me when all I have done is be a kind albeit somewhat distant, acquaintance, is somewhat a shock to me but I want to be nice and I am always open to friends so I explain that I am open to a friendship on Facebook but that is all I can offer due to the fact that I am getting over the end of a very serious relationship and also the fact that you live in a whole different country with a completely different culture, etc. You speak of how you love my faith in God, and say you share that faith and ok that is cool always nice to meet a fellow believer, a brother in Christ. Now you continue to declare your love and intentions, that you just know God means for us to be together, that you would make me the happiest wife ever, blah blah blah.
Ok bottom line, no you don't love me, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME! Declaring love for a chick you only know by their status updates and posts on Facebook not only makes you look incredibly suspicious but honestly it makes said chick (ME) doubt you have even one clue what real love is and doubt even more that you are for real. I did not ask for you to love me, and when you threw that at me I tried to be as kind but honest as I could. Maybe you expect that I would just fall at your feet and swim over there to marry you tomorrow but I am sorry, you are out of luck. I have explained to you that I just got out of a relationship that shattered me, and I have explained that by just I mean JUST, as in I am still dealing with the grief, and you still push your love on me. I have explained that I have major trust issues that are quite valid and the idea of getting into another long distance relationship honestly makes me kind of nauseous and is not something I am interested in at all. Your response, That you will move here...... ummmm NO you won't, and that kind of freaked me out even more.
You write me every day, multiple times a day, ok thats your prerogative, but we are not in a relationship, and I don't write my real life friends everyday and I love them to pieces. So the fact that now I have started avoiding Facebook and definitely started avoiding my inbox because I just don't have the time or inclination to try to make you understand, is not cool.
Lets go over this again, I DID NOT ASK YOU TO LOVE ME, I don't need your love, I don't want your love and I certainly don't want to be in a relationship with a clingy smothering man! Me being nice and kind was obviously misinterpreted by you as me wanting to jump your bones and make vows to you. Putting me into a situation where I have to be a mean witch is not cool and again not anything I asked for. Thing is dudes, and yes I am talking to multiple ones here, don't push your "love" on women who never asked for it. If you do approach a woman and they say all they can offer is friendship then for crying out loud show that woman who you claim to "love" that that love actually means respecting her no, because here is the deal, if you can't even respect a woman when they say they are only interested in friendship how in the world is that woman supposed to think you would ever respect her in any other matter. The same kind of rules that apply to rape apply here, unless you get an enthusiastic yes, back off and don't go further. If you get a lukewarm not right now or I need time then drop back and show you can be an actual friend and if you get a no then respect that freaking no and stay in friend/acquaintance zone or drop out of her life don't keep pushing and trying to "convince" her. Don't make her defend her answer, that just once again shows you have no respect for her or her thoughts and feelings.
It is not cool to do this, I am sorry but your "love" is not a priceless commodity that all women will thank you for delivering to them. I will not die if I don't get with you, I will not die from lack of sex, I do not need a man in my life to be happy, in fact I think I have shown that I can be completely happy and content on my own. I do not need a knight on a white horse to save me, and regardless of how many times you tell me that God has told you that I should be with you and we should be together unless God also sends that memo to me and gives me peace about it then sorry but I don't believe it so just stop. I am on facebook for fun and to keep in touch with family and friends all over the world, if I wanted matchmaking or dates I would sign up for eHarmony. Got it... I hope so
/rant
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Bullying Damages Peoples Lives!
In my previous post I talked through some of my feelings regarding finding that the man I had been dedicated to for the past 5 years had been cheating on me. I shared how I was bullied as a young girl in school by people playing with my heart and feelings by pretending to be interested in me, and then finding it hilarious when I believed what they were saying. In that post I was beating myself up for once again playing the fool like I had back in then, all those feelings of being the stupid fool had come flooding back and I kept telling myself how dumb I was to believe someone could love me. Those are the same lies that I was taunted with back then, and here a good 25 some years later those messages are still very deeply ingrained in my mind. They were my "truth" as I was growing up and that "truth" effected my whole life and it is what I struggle with now as I work to replace those lies with actual truth.
I have been pondering all this lately after I finally realized where the anger at myself was coming from, and I will admit I have been simmering with a little bit of anger. No longer am I angry at myself I am angry at those kids who found it so hilarious to play with someone elses heart and lives. I am angry that they felt it was ok to treat me and others who didn't "measure up" as third class citizens who deserved to be treated like crap. I am angry at all those people who will sit back and say bullying is harmful and that kids will be kids. I am really angry at the ones who say that "you have to be cruel to be kind" and that talk about tough love and try so desperately to hide the fact that they are just mean concern trolls. A comment on one of the blogs I read in the past few weeks (I can't remember where so if it was you give me a heads up) has really stuck in my head. They were commenting about tough love and said if that is the way you love then go love someone else. That was huge for me, I thought oh that is so right on, they go on and on about tough love and having to be mean in order to "save" someone, but does anyone ask the victim if they asked to be "loved?" I dare to wager that the majority would gladly pass on that kind of love, and would be better off for doing so. I honestly don't care how good your intentions are, if the person you are pointing them at doesn't invite you to share them, then shut your mouth, cause you aren't an undercover superhero.
Another thing that has me angry is how the adults I tried talking to when I was being bullied would react or respond. Most of the time I was told "You just gotta ignore them, they are just trying to get a reaction out of you and if you don't react they will stop" then the other thing that would happen was I would be encouraged to go on a diet, lose weight, change myself. Here is the deal folks, when a person, especially a young kid is being victimized by a bully or bullies, it is so not cool to put the responsibility for stopping it onto the victims shoulders cause lemme tell ya, they have enough to shoulder. That is the #1 reason that I stopped speaking out about all the stuff I went through, because it always became my problem, I would have to change myself or my reactions, I was the one in the wrong, not the bully. It wasn't until my late twenties just a few years ago when I was in a group counseling session at a clinic I had gone to in California for eating disorders that I actually shared some of the stuff I went through. To me it was just my childhood, it was my normal, all I knew but my counselor looked at me seriously and said "Teresa that was ABUSE, you talk about it as though it was your fault and that is was ok but that was ABUSE and it is not ok that that happened to you and I am so very sorry you had to go through that." That was the very first time in my life that I ever heard someone 1)give it the name of abuse because that is what it was and 2) tell me that I didn't deserve it and 3) that they were so sorry that it had happened to me. The first time I had EVER heard any of that. It honestly shocked me and I started to disagree because I was still holding the feeling of responsibility for it, then I just went silent for the rest of the session. I didn't know how to process not just that what was my normal, was actually abuse, but I also struggled to process that it wasn't my fault and that someone said they were sorry... to me...for what I have gone through. That counselor still holds a very dear place in my heart, he opened my eyes in such a profound way and I can still hear his voice and see his face as he spoke those words.
SleepyDumpling wrote a post on Fat Heffalump the other day Bullies – You Don’t Get a Cookie for Feeling Bad that had me nodding my head in agreement the whole way through. I am so sick of bullies getting a pass for their abusive behavior, and the thought of people feeling bad for them because "oh they must have had such a hard life" yeah well life is tough for everyone and that doesn't give us license to abuse others because of it. We need to not only stop bullying, and teach our children that bullying is bad and wrong, we need to give real consequences to the bullies not the victims. We need to stick up for the victims of bullies abusive ways, and we need to teach our children to be NICE and how to treat people with RESPECT even if you might not like them for some reason. The best way to do this is to model it in our own lives, treat the people we run across in life with respect. Yeah ok it might be nice to tell kids that "it gets better" but in the case of being a fat person that isn't always true and sometimes when you grow up the adults can be even worse than the kids were. It doesn't always get better and that cliche annoys me because it rings so much of the responses that I got from the adults that should have been protecting me in order to brush me aside. It might not get better, it might get worse, but I have found in the fat acceptance community that even if it doesn't get better you can find people who will stand beside you and tell you that what has happened to you is not ok and that they are so very sorry. They also help you replace the lies the bullies and abusers throw at you with the truth and that helps you to get stronger and stand firm when it doesn't get better.
So what do you think of "tough love" and people that think that abuse and shame is a good way to help people? What do you think of the "It gets better"saying? What can adults do when a kid comes to them and tells them they are being bullied, how would you react?
I have been pondering all this lately after I finally realized where the anger at myself was coming from, and I will admit I have been simmering with a little bit of anger. No longer am I angry at myself I am angry at those kids who found it so hilarious to play with someone elses heart and lives. I am angry that they felt it was ok to treat me and others who didn't "measure up" as third class citizens who deserved to be treated like crap. I am angry at all those people who will sit back and say bullying is harmful and that kids will be kids. I am really angry at the ones who say that "you have to be cruel to be kind" and that talk about tough love and try so desperately to hide the fact that they are just mean concern trolls. A comment on one of the blogs I read in the past few weeks (I can't remember where so if it was you give me a heads up) has really stuck in my head. They were commenting about tough love and said if that is the way you love then go love someone else. That was huge for me, I thought oh that is so right on, they go on and on about tough love and having to be mean in order to "save" someone, but does anyone ask the victim if they asked to be "loved?" I dare to wager that the majority would gladly pass on that kind of love, and would be better off for doing so. I honestly don't care how good your intentions are, if the person you are pointing them at doesn't invite you to share them, then shut your mouth, cause you aren't an undercover superhero.
Another thing that has me angry is how the adults I tried talking to when I was being bullied would react or respond. Most of the time I was told "You just gotta ignore them, they are just trying to get a reaction out of you and if you don't react they will stop" then the other thing that would happen was I would be encouraged to go on a diet, lose weight, change myself. Here is the deal folks, when a person, especially a young kid is being victimized by a bully or bullies, it is so not cool to put the responsibility for stopping it onto the victims shoulders cause lemme tell ya, they have enough to shoulder. That is the #1 reason that I stopped speaking out about all the stuff I went through, because it always became my problem, I would have to change myself or my reactions, I was the one in the wrong, not the bully. It wasn't until my late twenties just a few years ago when I was in a group counseling session at a clinic I had gone to in California for eating disorders that I actually shared some of the stuff I went through. To me it was just my childhood, it was my normal, all I knew but my counselor looked at me seriously and said "Teresa that was ABUSE, you talk about it as though it was your fault and that is was ok but that was ABUSE and it is not ok that that happened to you and I am so very sorry you had to go through that." That was the very first time in my life that I ever heard someone 1)give it the name of abuse because that is what it was and 2) tell me that I didn't deserve it and 3) that they were so sorry that it had happened to me. The first time I had EVER heard any of that. It honestly shocked me and I started to disagree because I was still holding the feeling of responsibility for it, then I just went silent for the rest of the session. I didn't know how to process not just that what was my normal, was actually abuse, but I also struggled to process that it wasn't my fault and that someone said they were sorry... to me...for what I have gone through. That counselor still holds a very dear place in my heart, he opened my eyes in such a profound way and I can still hear his voice and see his face as he spoke those words.
SleepyDumpling wrote a post on Fat Heffalump the other day Bullies – You Don’t Get a Cookie for Feeling Bad that had me nodding my head in agreement the whole way through. I am so sick of bullies getting a pass for their abusive behavior, and the thought of people feeling bad for them because "oh they must have had such a hard life" yeah well life is tough for everyone and that doesn't give us license to abuse others because of it. We need to not only stop bullying, and teach our children that bullying is bad and wrong, we need to give real consequences to the bullies not the victims. We need to stick up for the victims of bullies abusive ways, and we need to teach our children to be NICE and how to treat people with RESPECT even if you might not like them for some reason. The best way to do this is to model it in our own lives, treat the people we run across in life with respect. Yeah ok it might be nice to tell kids that "it gets better" but in the case of being a fat person that isn't always true and sometimes when you grow up the adults can be even worse than the kids were. It doesn't always get better and that cliche annoys me because it rings so much of the responses that I got from the adults that should have been protecting me in order to brush me aside. It might not get better, it might get worse, but I have found in the fat acceptance community that even if it doesn't get better you can find people who will stand beside you and tell you that what has happened to you is not ok and that they are so very sorry. They also help you replace the lies the bullies and abusers throw at you with the truth and that helps you to get stronger and stand firm when it doesn't get better.
So what do you think of "tough love" and people that think that abuse and shame is a good way to help people? What do you think of the "It gets better"saying? What can adults do when a kid comes to them and tells them they are being bullied, how would you react?
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