(Extremely) Late Night Thoughts

Bullies. I finally understand. I finally have realized how they get their power and how they get through to a human with only words. If you continue to hear certain things from anybody around you eventually you will probably start to understand them as true. If someone continues to say hurtful and negative things to you you will probably begin to overthink everything and realize that maybe what they’re saying is the truth. Maybe you are these things. And eventually they start to define you without even necessarily realizing it.

For me, I have spent the past 8+ weeks telling and retelling the story of how I was told that I am disrespectful and have an attitude problem among other negative personality traits, and now it has become really hard to not spend too much time thinking about these things. To not start to believe these things about myself. Some nights it’s 2:30 in the morning and I sit here questioning whether or not it’s all true. I think back to other instances where I’ve been accused of being rude, harsh, selfish, unfriendly, inconsiderate, untrustworthy and mean. Does this make me a disrespectful human? Or were these words simply uttered by someone who chose to be not-so-nice to me? Or by someone who was around me during a hard time in my life?

Bullies. I finally understand. They have become harsh humans too. And is this for the same reason? Someone was negative towards them and now that negativity has manifested inside of them for so long to create this not-so-nice human? It’s crazy to think about all of the people who have been mean to you, have called you names, and have accused you of things that aren’t always true. Why do they do this? We don’t know everyone’s backstory and we don’t know what anger and hate has built up inside of them or for how long. We may know absolutely nothing about them. So what can we do in these situations? When people get on your case for one thing or another: We can return the hate with kindness. We can ignore the situation. Or we can be mean in return. Those are about the only possibilities. And I think how you react to this is what truly defines you as a person.