Can't you just pretend to be nice?

I made the front page of the Life section of the Register-Herald newspaper.  Here is the article:

http://www.register-herald.com/features/x1402340865/2-Cool-2-Bully

I'm pretty nervous about this whole speech thing, as far as that goes, partially because public speaking has never really been a strength of mine, partially because I have no earthly idea what I am going to say, but mainly because anti-bullying is one topic that I feel super strongly about.

The article was correct, I was bullied from kindergarten (I started when I was 4 years old) until college graduation (23 years old).  It's not fun.  It's not "cool" to bully someone.  In fact, the only time it is justified to do so is if you're bullying a bully.  Those who are undeserving should never have to go through the type of hell I did.  I was picked on by fellow students AND teachers from everything from drawing teeth on a construction paper Santa Claus (that was the bullying teacher) to being fat (students) and dating females (both students and teachers).  

Looking back, it's no surprise that I started shooting off at the mouth (a creative string of obscenities can and will be released at any point in time) and being rebellious with my drinking at such a young age.  It had nothing to do with my upbringing.  My mother was and still is the best mother anyone could ever ask for.  We've had it out, we've screamed and cried at each other until we were hoarse, but I guarantee you one thing is for certain in this world, and that is that woman raised me right.  I love her.  I talk to her every day.  There have been times where I've said horrible things and have been extremely unappreciative of the sacrifices that she's made for me, but I have almost instantly regretted and retracted them.  We'll get into the point of this story in just a moment.

I feel that quite a bit of bullies personalities begin at home.  Nobody ever looks at the parents anymore, they all want to look at society.  But, parents monitor their children's exposure to society, correct?  At least my mother did... Unless you're a completely neglectful parent, you should be doing this same thing.  Having a role model for girls who gyrates around in a bikini calling other girls "stupid hoes" is just about the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my entire life.  But some parents just do let their kids run around and be little assholes - but not my mom.  If I heard the phrase, "I'm getting the switch!" I puckered my mouth and rear up so hard that I wouldn't dare move.  It just seems like parents can't even discipline their child now without having someone from Child Protective Services come and scream "child abuse."  There's no grey area.  It's such a slippery slope that you can't even take their toy(s) from them.  It doesn't seem fair to me, because I was raised with a great amount of discipline, was bullied for as long as I was, and turned out just fine.  Now I'm hearing stories of kids being bullied so severely that they kill themselves, and THAT. GRINDS. MY. GEARS.

So, the family point from earlier - I brought up that point, to elaborate this one:  Tonight I had to stand up to a bully.  It was my younger cousin, let's just call her RG... RG is disabled for all intents and purposes.  A few months ago, RG and her sister JS thought it would be a good idea to come up here and hang out, get to know this side of their family. They stayed with my mom for a little bit, and then JS decided she wanted to go back home.  RG had a choice to go home or stay here.  If she went home, she would be living for free basically.  Back with her mother.  If she stayed here, she would be paying rent, living with my mother.  Long story short, RG was disrespectful and actually at one point put my niece and nephew in peril.  She recently moved back, has been trying to extortion money from my family, and has now called my mother and my mother's partner everything from backstabbers to money-hungry, when all they were doing was being landlords.  I decided to step in because I will not see my family be taken advantage of, from a bully, family member or otherwise.

I hate to admit this, but I feel it's necessary... Sometimes I'm all bark and no bite.  I talk a big game but I usually plan out what I'm going to say in my head but when I have to vocalize it, it comes out completely different.  There have only been a few instances (very few) where I have physically said something to someone that sounded the way I had planned it in my noggin.  So thank deity for texting, folks!  Because there I can say whatever I want, and word it exactly how I want, and it will somehow work out in my favor.

Part of being all bark and no bite when it really matters though, is that I get this impending feeling of doom.  My heart starts racing, I start sweating, shaking, and my face turns really red.  So all of this happened to me tonight, even rewriting it now I'm getting some of the symptoms.  However, it's something that obviously needed to be done.  It stopped the bullying, for now.  I had to have my parents promise that they would notify me if anything else was said.  I won't repeat what I said, but I was very well researched with laws, so I believe that making her acutely aware of what would happen to her if the harassment continued was the right direction to go with my messages.  I did get to use some of my more colorful vocabulary though.