I want you to know that it was bullying did me in. Made me anorexic. Not you or Dad or the others, but the spitballs. The two BFF turning their backs on me and hating me for 3 months. For no reason. No, for the very good reason that we were middle school girls and that's what middle school girls do. Haze each other and make the outsider baste in her own hateful skin.
Too good of a vocabulary. Too.... everything. Not their friend. Someone to whom you say mean things, whom you get the 8th grade girls to taunt. Whom you call the hated names that her siblings called her and that she shared with you in confidence. When you used to be best friends.
But who allows that to happen to herself? Who goes to the nurse's office, the counselor's office but doesn't say, "My so-called friends are being bitches"? Who allows themselves to be bullied?
Me. I did. Because somehow I was a shameful enough person to deserve it. That's what I'm getting now. Why it still stings now. Because they were wrong and I didn't stand up for myself. Because it's my pattern. They were Hammers and I was an Anvil.
There are bad people in the world. Hammers who will never understand the secret life of Anvils. The Hammers can't even begin to conceive that someone outside of themselves may hold a shard of truth. That is the face of evil. The cocksure, I've-got-all-the-answers-face. We Anvils, on the other hand, grab for that piece of truth that has just barely eluded us. That everyone but us must have.
Huh. That's it.
I am out in this world with the Hammers. Where they can lift their snouts to the air and smell my vulnerability, my uncertainty, my need. And then circle in for the kill.
I have been "over-sensitive" from the time I was shoved from the womb. I need to toughen up, get a thicker skin. But dammit, I don't want to! Partly because I'm just plain old stubborn, partly because it is hard to not be me. Believe me, I've tried.
But also because there is at least one perk to being sensitive... I have lived many lives. I have felt and experienced and intuited that which was not happening to me. Because I'm never sure. Because I can't avoid looking at the Other and listening and thinking, "What would it be like? What is it like in that skin? Believing what they believe, knowing what they know?"
I'm not sure what this sensitivity gets me - certainly nothing tangible. But somehow I like it. I like seeing the Falstaffs and the Hamlets and the Katherines. I like knowing them - even if it is only from the obtuse angle of inference. I like wavering on the edge of my skin and letting that translucent self blur just enough to understand.
And that's something the Hammers will never get.
Nor take from me.
9 comments:
yeah, middle school. my skin crawls just thinking about it. i got 2 years of the no-friends treatment. i guess i wasn't worthy of having friends, right?
and, senstivity? i sit here with tears streaming down my face, knowing that nothing is flowing down his, and what does that leave me? dehydrated in both body and soul. but, yes...we've lived harder, more fully than the others. and i wouldn't give that up. i hope i'm never again asked to give that up.
Without a nail, or maybe an anvil, what is a hammer?
.... it's snowing something crazy here.
-jwm
Be yourself, hammer? anvil? or fiery blaze?
Just say "its hammertime" when you need it. And then watch out.
I was the beast that threw the hammer into the woods, I still hate bullies. My middle son possesses that same sensitivity as you write about and unfortunately he is the only one in the family, so sometimes he gets trampled. Thanks for putting some perspective on it for me.
Whoa TT! You hit a nail with that virtual hammer. My oldest is in HS, and is hyper sensitive about all that stuff. She's a good student that has suffered that treatment EXACTLY. It affects her grades. She has actually been in and out of HS for four years doing the alternative: On-line, home school, etc. She made it finally(!) Graduated a semester early.....
Thanks for that, I am going to pass it on to her.
BTW: don't change, please. The Anvil shouldn't change because of the hammer. Lower your center of gravity so when they hit, you bounce back up again.
Being a parent to 2 young girls, I am very congnizant of what you are saying. Who has the right to make another feel so low? How do you teach strength, inner beauty, and independence? These are things I struggle with.
Wow, what a range of thoughts!
For the record, "In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer," is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, respectfully alluded to by me.
Very nicely written. In a way I wish I couldn't relate to your feelings and yet, the same as you, I know that if I were not the person I am, some part of my life would not be as rich as it is. I have also been told I was too sensitive ever since a very young age and it's had its benefits and drawbacks. Given as a whole, it's just part of who I am, so I make the best of it when I can.
I think it's the Hammers that are really missing something, but they will likely never know it. Now that I've got kids I'm trying to make sure they're never the hammers that pound anyone else.
I've told numerous people that the worst part of being a parent is having to go through childhood all over again. I think it hurts worse the second time, when you can only provide comfort while the child works through it. Working as a teacher has got to compound that.
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