by Band Back Together | Aug 20, 2015 | Adult Bullying, Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Fear, Workplace Bullying |
When I was in school, I became a target for bullying. I feel like the main reason I was bullied was because I was white. Most of my bullies were African/Black. I am in no way a racist. I’ve had more black friends than white.
One day in gym class, my friend Robbie and I were sitting in the gym and a group of students came up to us. There were five of them, and they were skipping class. They started calling us names, hitting us, and even tried to get us to fight each other. We tried to leave, but they wouldn’t let us. They just kept pushing us. Eventually, they got tired and left.
The next year, the gym teacher would pay Robbie and me with candy for cleaning under the bleachers. A different group of students than before thought it would be funny to choke me with a belt. The coach was downstairs, and had no idea that while he was gone, they were trying to hang me with a belt under the bleachers.
The most recent bullying happened two or three years ago, at work. I was the only white guy on the day maintenance crew. I did the best job I could, without a complaint from anyone. The night maintenance crew took over at 10:00. One of the guys in night maintenance would target me, and me only. He would say the bathrooms weren’t clean, so he would make me go back and clean them again – even going so far as to make me pick up broken glass with my bare hands. The other night workers would just stand there, laughing.
I’m very shy. I’ve never been in a fight with anyone. I grew up in a Christian home, where I was taught to love others. But the guy at work just kept pushing me. I found myself hating him. Thankfully, he transferred to another store, so I don’t have to deal with him anymore.
All of my life, I have been bullied by nothing but blacks. I feel like there is a tug-of-war going on inside of me. I want to be friendly and outgoing, but all the bullying in my past has left its mark. I feel like it is holding me back from who I want to be. I don’t want to feel fear and hatred.
I’m terribly sorry if I have offend anyone with my words.
by Band Back Together | Aug 18, 2015 | Bullying, Depression, Loneliness, Sadness, Self Loathing, Shame |
Untreated depression leads to chronic depersonalization” would be a meaningful statement if you meant something, but you mean nothing.
You are not a hardy child of Appalachia; stop wasting your days listening to bluegrass playlists, pining for a time that will never exist. You are weak. People wade through hells far deeper than this one, the soles of their feet scorched but their ankles held intact. But your tendons are peeling like the stalk of a pineapple, the skin on your knee burnt off to display brittle bone, graham cracker bone, bone of yarn, bone of string cheese.
Stay inside where neighbors cannot see the grotesque state of your legs. Stay inside where you cannot chant for them: gooble-gobble, one of us.
Do you want to know what a real person looks like? Don’t skip class this week. Arrive late and sit in one of the satellite desks. Never learn what Marx said. Observe the others mid-digestion and covet their hairlines, their builds. Sketch a series of concentric circles and keep your head down, because you are not a scholar, you are a machine, you are an alarm clock, you are a Disney Channel original series, you are just a paideia, you are mendacity itself. Masturbate for me; you deserve the shame of an amputee juggler on a unicycle, you deserve the shame of a hapless fourteen-year-old YouTube celebrity. Look around you and tell me if any of the people you see had to order their bootstraps off the Silk Road. Every waste of Bitcoins is melancholy, o destitute child, they don’t weave bootstraps in your size.
What you are going to need is a course of Paxil. It is a medication that, by the miracle of contemporary science, will make it easier for you to be worthless. You will be glad to have taken it, as it will make you scream less and sleep more. It will take your ragged canyon and level it out into mesa, and then it will take your mesa and build a timeshare resort. Paxil is an electric fence between banality and suicidality. Paxil is the opposite of filthy, passionate fucking. The instructions on the back of the bottle tell you to stream amateur porn and look at the way they want each other, then take down two pills with a light snack. You are going to forget, but don’t forget: you have to be beautiful to be hired as a caricature artist at the renaissance fair. Don’t forget, you have to do your laundry more often than you do now.
by Band Back Together | Aug 5, 2015 | Abandonment, Abuse, Bullying, Depression, Domestic Abuse, Fear, Intimate Partner Rape, Psychological Manipulation, Rape/Sexual Assault, Trust, Unemployment |
I am a victim of domestic violence and almost every form of intimate partner abuse that you can name.
Through my therapy, I have heard of “White Knight Syndrome.” This is when a person has a naturally good nature and wants to protect people in danger and people in need. My ex knew that I was an instinctively good person and would help those that I could, the elderly lady that fell off a bus, the disabled man that asked for help to get up the stairs, someone being attacked on the street, a victim of domestic violence, a victim of rape.
She knew, and she took advantage of it. She claimed she was raped one night. She claimed that someone was bullying her because she was a woman. She said that she was unfairly sacked because her boss was racist. She would say anything she could to try and get a reaction out of me, anything to prove to herself that she had control over me by having me fix whatever problem she created.
If I didn’t beat up the rapist, she would say I was controlling.
If I didn’t side with her against her bullying friend, she would say I wasn’t letting her go out.
If I didn’t have a go at her boss for being racist, I was called the racist.
None of this added up to me. Her friends would call me and say I should let her go out, even though she was out with them every week. My friends started threatening to beat me up for something I apparantly did to her whilst I was at work. People started threatening me and attacking me all the time. When I’d ask her if she knew what was happening, she’d deny it.
This is where I knew she was lying.
Not once, not ever, in all times I was beaten did I get a hug, or a kiss, or any empathy, sympathy, or pity from her. When I walked in with my leg nearly broken, she shrugged it off. I went to the hospital alone. When I was threatened, she would just turn the other way and go back to watching something on TV. I gave up telling her. I would either be ignored, or worse, she would deliberately walk away and call me weak for being upset, depressed, down, low.
I was more scared of telling her that I was battered with a pole through fear that this would give her satisfaction. I was terrified of telling her that someone nearly broke my leg. Instead, I told her I fell over. I kept hiding the injuries caused by what she was doing to me. I was hiding the number of times she’d had me battered for something as simple as asking her to sweep up whilst I cooked and cleaned the dishes.
Now when someone tells me that they have been raped, I worry that they might be lying, and I’m going to be manipulated again. I worry I will find myself stuck in a place where I know my heart tells me to protect this person, but my mind is telling me to keep myself safe.
For a very long time, I was running from pillar to post trying to protect the person that I loved, without destroying my own life. I eventually started letting the police deal with it.
That’s when the truth came out.
She wasn’t raped. She arranged to meet up with him because I wasn’t dominant enough.
She wasn’t wrongfully sacked by a racist boss. She had her final disciplinary action because she refused to do her job countless times, and she damaged clients’ property.
She wasn’t being bullied. She wanted to hide the fact that she had stolen money.
The list goes on and on.
Anyone can be in danger of false accusations. The people like me who have suffered forced penetration (that’s what they call it when a man is drugged and raped by a woman) don’t come forward until it’s too late. None of us have the courage to face disbelief from others for what we have suffered.
To all the women out there who are victims of rape, I am sorry for you all.
To all the men who are victims of domestic violence, I am sorry for you all.
I know how hard it is to fear disbelief because I have faced disbelief.
I have had to relive my abuse over and over again with every time I tell someone what happened. Over and over again, I feel scared that the person I’m telling is going to point at me, laugh at me. I’m scared that they will disbelieve me even, when shown the evidence, even when hearing the truth from my abuser, even after becoming a victim of it themselves.
by Band Back Together | Jul 24, 2015 | Abuse, Adult Bullying, Alcohol Addiction, Anxiety, Bullying, Child Abuse, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Depression, Infidelity, Loneliness, Self-Esteem, Stress, Suicide, Violence |
The name is Kat, and I’m a 29 year old college graduate. I feel bad about being so “big” and still being bullied. I thought it was something that just happens to kids and teens, but thanks to The Band, I’ve felt a little more comfortable admitting that yeah, I’m 29 and I’m still being bullied.
My parents have always had problems. When I was smaller, they would get into huge, violent fights that would end up in them beating each other (mostly my dad towards my mother) and cussing at each other. My two younger sisters and I grew up in a very violent atmosphere but were always close.
We also lived with our grandparents in the same house, and they would defend us a lot from my parents’ rage. My dad was an alcoholic and cheated on my mother. She would take it out on my sisters and me, mostly on me, since I was the one that always talked back to her, protecting my sisters.
Thanks to the constant abuses, I grew up insecure about myself. I was actually pretty creative, but also very violent. The slightest insult towards me, and I would attack other kids. Whenever my mom and I fought, I would feel the need to eat, so I was a little chubby. That got me bullied even more.
Back home, my mom used to beat my sisters and me with a wooden flat stick, saying that the Bible told her to “correct” her children like that. Aside from that, she would slap, choke, and punch me in the face, in many of our confrontations.
As a teen, I had a lot of trouble with authority and got into many fights with kids, claiming they only wanted to hurt me. My first boyfriend went to jail, and I changed universities a lot.
At 23, I had enough, and left the house. I got a great paying job and moved into an apartment, away from my mother. Once out, I got thin, got a new wonderful boyfriend and had a “perfect” life. But I still wanted to finish my career, which meant I had to quit my job, go back home, find another job that allowed me to study, and get into college once again.
Back home, I got chubby again. My mother constantly fights with me and tells me she doesn’t want me in her house. She values the pet more than me since she tells me that if her pet is sleeping on my bed, I’m not allowed to push her off. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of it. Her new husband shouts at me and loves getting me in trouble with her. I had to fight and struggle through college because of the stress at home.
I graduated three months ago, and I’m desperately looking for a job, so I can get out of this hell. My mom and I fight at least four times a week, and she always tells me to get the fuck out of her house. I have nowhere to go. I don’t want to involve my friends in this, and my father has another family. I’m desperate, I feel lonely, I lost my boyfriend, and she and her husband are constantly bullying me.
It may sound horrible and harsh, but its the truth. It took me 29 years to figure out why I eat compulsively. Just now, we had another fight. As soon as it ended, I raided the fridge, even though I wasn’t hungry at all. It’s not about filling “the void,” its about the desperation and anxiety I feel that make me want to eat like crazy.
However, I still remain strong. I wish for you gentle people who read my story to stay strong. I may be a little depressive, but I’m not suicidal. I love life and I want to move on. I know there are many amazing things waiting for me, and I just have to go ahead and do them.
Thanks for reading my story.
by Band Back Together | Jul 15, 2015 | A Letter I Can't Send, Abandonment, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Boundaries, Family, Fear, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, How To Help A Friend Whose Child Is Seriously Ill, Loss, Pediatric Caregiver, Pediatric Mental Illness, Relational Aggression, Sadness, Stress, Teen Bullying, Trauma, Trust |
You have broken my heart;
you have cut me to the bone;
you have stabbed me in the back;
you have endangered my children;
you have stolen from me;
you have threatened to kill me and it seems every time we talk you spew out nothing but lies.
I failed you. As the person who brought you into this world, it was my convoluted job to make you appropriate for society.
If you had been an only child, would it have been different? If you had been an only child, would I have given you more leeway so I did not sacrifice your siblings humiliation, safety and discontent?
We moved for you. It was the area, the neighborhood, the school, the doctors. I did everything and gave all in hope that the problem wasn’t really you.
Doctors, therapists, counselors, hospitals; things a mother should never have to say about her child, I said.
In the end, I failed you.
For many years, I was a mighty warrior set out to ensure your health and happiness, but you broke my spirit and I gave up. I want so badly to let you in, but the price is so high and I am emotionally bankrupt.
You deserved a stronger mother, one who could stay in the fight, one who could be more understanding, one who could battle for more than 19 years. I am so sorry you ended up with me, who tried to make you fit in a cookie-cutter mold. I still have no clue what kind of mom could have helped you.
It wasn’t me.
I battled uphill to mend my broken life while trying to protect yours. The spiraling, all-consuming, soul-sucking, constantly being kicked and punched, that was all beyond me.
I’m sorry I am so broken and weak that I can’t afford to be hurt again. Everyone in your world has disconnected over the years in the simple and often subconscious act of self-preservation. But in everyone’s life, there should be at least one constant, one person you know will always be there. You don’t even have that.
I hurt you.
I insulted you.
I embarrassed you.
I punished you.
I hospitalized you.
I let you down.
I lied to you.
I threatened you.
I had you arrested.
I closed my door to you.
I laughed at you.
I walked away….
I didn’t ever deserve you, and you certainly didn’t deserve me.
by Band Back Together | Jun 11, 2015 | Abuse, Bullying, Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Insomnia, Loss, Major Depressive Disorder, Murder, Suicide, Workplace Bullying |
I used to work as a planning engineer at a big construction company. I am a pure vegetarian. I didn’t like the non-vegegarian food near me, so I used to stay away from all the people who used to eat non-veg food. We all stayed in a company provided guest house, and they were the majority.
My roommate there tortured me physically where we were staying, and mentally at our workplace, on a daily basis. Since I was inexperienced and rather new to the industry, he used to bully me and downgrade me by calling me a clerk even though I was a Senior Engineer there. I wanted to report the physical torture to my superiors, but my roommate threatened that he would have people torture my family if I did.
In the same office I fell in love with a girl I worked with. I told her that I was being bullied, but she thought I was joking. My roommate’s bullying caused me to leave my job and kept me from having a healthy relationship with the girl I loved. He was telling her bad things about me, and I didn’t want to tell her everything he had been doing to me. I had thoughts of committing suicide and sometimes I even thought about killing him. These thoughts would run over and over in my dreams like nightmares.
Because of him, I am depressed, I lost my job, and I lost the girl I love. I want to report him to the police. I want to kill myself. I can’t sleep from all the nightmares. I don’t know who to talk to because I am afraid and embarrassed. Please help me if you have been through something like this.
