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I felt frustrated. I felt helpless. I felt
embarrassed. I felt like a quitter. And it had happened
over a year ago. Bullying certainly has the capacity to cause
emotional harm in the bullied. But as I had yet to fully realize,
such damage can only last with the silent consent of the bullied.
It is up to him to deny the self-blame which comes from a
bullying situation, and to decide not to live the rest of
his life under the shadow of that incident.
I was a twelve-year old Boy Scout, just
beginning to work toward the rank of Eagle Scout. But the
organization, or lack thereof, of my troop made it all but
impossible to advance in rank. My patrol leaders, older scouts
responsible for helping the younger scouts complete requirements
for advancing in rank, only worsened the situation. They used
troop meetings as hangout time. When you sought their help
in completing a requirement you were either repulsed with
shouting and ridicule or, if they were compelled to work with
you, treated like an inferior being when you couldn’t
tie a knot correctly on the first try. In short, they bullied
anyone who interrupted their hangout time, and yet anyone
who did not interrupt could never accomplish anything.
After a year, I decided to quit Boy Scouts.
Yet, though I hardly even knew it, I continued to let the
bullying get to me. I still felt embarrassed. I felt frustrated
that I had not been able to achieve Eagle, and I felt like
I had quit when I should have kept trying. I felt as if I
was to blame somehow.
And indeed I was. But it was not for anything
to do with the actual situation at Boy Scouts. I had been
a twelve year-old, while the bullies were fifteen or sixteen
year-olds. Also, their positions as patrol leaders made their
help necessary for advancing in rank. Quitting was my only
good option. My fault was that I allowed the embarrassment
and frustration to last. Once I got away from the bullies
by leaving the troop, it became my responsibility to eradicate
the emotions caused by bullying.
This is actually a rather simple process, the greatest obstacle
to its completion being a failure to even try. One has only
to reason, either by oneself or with someone else. Am I to
blame for any part of what happened? Do I really have anything
to be embarrassed about? If not, one must only remember this;
if so, the situation can be considered a lesson for future
reference, but nothing more. In either case, a past bullying
situation need not have a negative effect on the rest of a
person’s life.
Bullying can cause two types of harm:
physical and emotional. It seems ironic that in most cases
the longer lasting and more damaging of the two is emotional,
the type which is in the victim’s control. Bullying itself
is not likely to disappear from the face of the Earth any
time soon. But by dealing right away with the emotional hurt
that follows a bullying situation, it is possible to render
bullying no more than an annoyance.
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