Beating bullying

Image by “Lipscomb Bisons”

Her faith was broken and Jesus himself did not posses the carpentry skills to mend her splintering.

“For a time, I actually believed that I had strayed too far from my faith for God to help me or bring me back. I gave up on Him because I thought He had given up on me.”

She believed, even if no one else would, that she was unimportant. There was nothing in her life that mattered and nothing that could convince her otherwise. She lived a purposeless life, devoid of significance. The only reason she remained standing was because she didn’t care enough to kill herself; she wasn’t important enough to draw that kind of attention. She wasn’t depressed; she was indifferent.

“I used to care about what people thought about me. I lived every single day, afraid of what they might say or do to me. They didn’t care about me; all they cared about was making my life a living hell just because they could.”

She looked back on the days of her youth, torturous and agonizing. There were few people she felt close to then, and even fewer she felt comfortable labeling as friends. Walking through the halls of her old high school, memories flooded her consciousness.

“They slipped notes in my locker; bad ones. I mean they said really, really awful things. I was too fat, so I became bulimic, but I started having severe intestinal problems from throwing up. I was tearing up my insides. So, I decided I wouldn’t throw up anymore, I just stopped eating. I was anorexic for a long time. My parents were insanely worried, they didn’t understand what was going on with me. I just tried to convince them that I had started running a lot. Yea, I’m not athletic at all, so they had to have known that wasn’t true.”

The bitter taste of acid burned her throat. Again and again, she brutalized her body, torturing herself to satisfy an anonymous expectation. But, they were never satisfied and there was no expectation. She was merely the subject of purposeless and thoughtless taunting, for the satisfaction of a group wholly unconcerned with the damage it had on her health and happiness. They were unconcerned with her life.

“Of course, then they told me I was too skinny. At that point they were right; I was under 100 pounds. But, once they told me that, I ate junk food for a while and then I gave up. I gave up trying to please them, they were never going to stop bullying me. For some reason, it made them happy. Sending me to therapy, isolating me from the rest of the world, and breaking my faith gave them some sort of sick satisfaction and so they kept bullying me until I dropped out of school.”

Therapy should have helped, but it didn’t. She didn’t need to talk about it, lay down on a plush red sofa, and cry out her feelings, continually addressing the, “and how do you feel about that?” question. She learned two things from Dr. Useless: One, everything was pointless; two, everything was meaningless. Soon she began to understand the meaning of apathy.

“I could go on and on about how terrible it was, but it doesn’t even matter anymore. They were wrong. I know it, they should, and God knows. At the time, I blamed the bullies and I blamed God for letting them bully me. He could have prevented all of it from happening. I never understood why, but I figured out that I’m not supposed to understand the reasoning.”

Out of school, out of therapy, and in a state of perpetual indifference, she, in a moment of clarity, sought counsel elsewhere. She didn’t need to know that other people were in her same situation.

“Cool,” she thought, “other people are suffering too. Let’s have a pity party.”

Apparently misery, in fact, does not love, want, or need, company. Instead, she went to the Bible, she went into prayer, and she went to the Dominican Republic.

“All I know is I am a better person now because of all of it. I went through Hell on Earth, but after I got over my ‘not caring’ stage, I started praying a lot. I asked God to carry me through the hard times; to show me what to do, how to feel, and where to go. Well, he sent me to the Dominican Republic and that made all the difference. I was going through a hard time, emotionally and physically, but the kids in the Dominican had absolutely nothing. They were starving, alone, and should have been miserable. They had every right to complain and cry, but they were all smiles, all the time. I’ll never forget them and God taught me through them. I’m here now. I’m alive and I’m happy and strong. God got me through it.”

While there, a young boy said to her, in the little English he knew, “Jesus tell you come here? He here too. He love me; he love you; he love everybody, even bad people. He love them too.”

The week after returning home from her two week long mission trip, she got a tattoo of the outline of the Dominican Republic, with the words the boy spoke to her as the outline. The tattoo, located on her right shoulder blade, is very simple, but equally powerful.

“I was reminded of God’s power and presence all over the world. These kids knew so little about the Bible, but it didn’t matter. They knew the two most important things: to love God and to love others, because God loves everyone equally, despite the sins we all commit. I also really understood for the first time that there are things bigger and more important than me. God is everywhere, working through His people to show love to the world. That’s the reason I got my tattoo. I wanted something that was going to be more than me. I didn’t want it to be about overcoming my struggle or about my pain and perseverance. It’s about God, and love, and that child, and those bullies. It needed to be about something bigger.”