BREAKING MY SILENCE

This essay is for everyone who has ever been at the receiving end of disparaging and scurrilous comments, derisive and scornful behavior, and all other forms of bullying from the rabble, the canaille, the dregs of humanity, the scum of the earth. I am obviously not using these terms to signify a particular socio-economic class, for experience and common sense tell me that a lot of paupers have a lot more breeding, class, and character than a lot of well-to-do people, and that refinement in manners and conduct does not necessarily come hand in hand with a diploma.


I was for a time the object of constant bullying by a piece of riffraff who, armed as he was with a surfeit of uncultured insolence, without fail acted rudely with impunity. He was the archetype of the person described by Henry Youngman as "a guy with a cocktail glass in one hand and your lapel in the other", lampooned by George Bernard Shaw: "the trouble with him is that he lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech", lambasted by Matthew Prior: "he talks most who has the least to say", and characterized by Gian Vincenzo Lavina as "a person who lights up a room simply by leaving it". My reticence was made the subject of snide remarks by the said piece of riffraff and his coterie of minions: "Don't you know how to speak?", "Are you deaf-mute?", "Is mental telepathy the only means of communication you're capable of?", "You must teach me how to use the sign language so that we can converse." My manner of speaking was mocked and ridiculed. Thanks, however, to my exposure to asinine T.V. shows such as Beavis and Butthead, my threshold tolerance for empty-headedness had skyrocketed to stratospheric heights -- I was thus able to shrug aside his philistine and plebeian bullying. If that was how low the piece of riffraff's capacity for thinking and feeling was, I reasoned to myself, it was beneath my grasp to attempt to inject even just a few raisins of sense and sensitivity into the crude, coarse dough of his existence.


It gradually dawned on me, however, (and it was disconcerting to realize) that from nursery to grade school, from grade school to high school, from high school to my pre – law school days, I was not once subjected to any form of bullying whatsoever, and it was only now that I was in law school at a time when I'm supposed to be better equipped to uphold my rights that my rights were being flagrantly trampled upon.


While one, the bullying I was malevolently subjected to was a mere trifle compared to the gravity of bullying allegedly suffered by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris; two, I have such an infallible, invincible support system in my family that there is meager chance of me turning ruthlessly vigilante, and three, immortalizing my tormentors' pecadillos more than suffices to purge myself of bottled-up angst, the same may not hold true for others similarly or worse situated. Hence, I will proselytize a bit, like a priest in a pulpit, in the hope of reaching out to a fellow tormented.


Why me? It took a long time for it to sink in, but when it did, the realization brought me more than disquiet: it made my blood boil. (And that speaks volumes, coming from a person whose boiling point is – in my estimation – 414 degrees Fahrenheit.) Out of all the women in our "social clime", I was the only person the riffraff dared treat with disrespect. "Why me?" was the riddle I vowed to unravel – the answer to which wasn't that difficult to decipher. My reflection in the mirror said one-fourth of the story. My life history revealed three-fourths. I'm different. I'm not like everybody else. (And I take great pride in that.) Translating that into bully-speak, I'm "strange", "weird", "queer", "odd" – and the panoply of eccentricities that I possess ostensibly make me a walking invitation – nay, a human magnet -- for people with nothing of substance to do and a lot of "disposable" time on their hands to be the consummate nuisances that they are.


From the riffraff's point of view and in his own words, it was my "nice-ness" that captured his perverse fancy. You see, I'm the exact opposite of what I sound like on paper and on the computer screen. While I tend to sound fiery and feisty in "virtual life", in "real life" words such as "assertive" and "aggressive" would be the last adjectives in the dictionary that anyone would ever consider using to describe me. To my inveterate disadvantage, I'd much rather suffer in silence and maintain a friendly demeanor than antagonize anyone, even if that someone very much deserves to have hail and brimstone fall upon him. Unfortunately for me and for people like me, in much the same way that in the animal world animal bullies look for weak, sick, and easy-to-vanquish prey, human bullies are on the look-out for meek, docile, easy-to-subdue persons.


Why do they do it? A plausible reason is that the riffraff (and his cohorts) were subconsciously threatened by my sense of individuality, and itched to re-cast me in their hallowed image and likeness. Or it could be that the manifold idiosyncracies that I have which set me apart from the howling throng made me an accessible source of amusement whenever their imagination-arid minds couldn't conjure a more worthwhile pastime.


What I should have done. Each time I was made the object of disdainful and scathing remarks, in pathetic Beatitude-fashion I numbed my senses and contained my rage. I mentally hurled expletives at them as I grit my teeth in suppressed anger. I regret to this day that I wasn't able to muster the courage to spew my pent-up vitriol at my aggressors and tell them to their faces: "You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all alike." I doubt if I could have made him quiver in fear, but it would have been a cathartic experience on my part to have proven to all and sundry that contrary to reputation I'm no doormat afterall.


My advice to anyone in need of it. Keep in mind that if you yourself won't uphold your rights, nobody will, and that if you don't speak out now that you have the chance, you may never again have the chance to do so. If the bullying you're being subjected to is of a more serious character (you are the best judge of this), report it not just to your family and friends, but also to concerned authorities who are in the position to officially act on the matter.


To borrow the analogy used in an online self-defense manual I read last year, don't be a sheep, be a caribou. Don't be that sheep that is effortlessly and expectedly killed and devoured by the coyote. Instead, be that caribou in the herd that looks the wolf straight in the eye, stomps her feet, snorts through her fuzzy nose, and says, "Okay, come and get me, but expect yourself to be crushed to a bloody pulp."


While I have yet to muster the panache to practice what I preach, I'm all for bullying the bully, tyrannizing the tyrant, tormenting the tormentor. I'm not saying that every instance of taunting, jeering, or scoffing at someone is tantamount to bullying – or that every incident of bullying warrants either an eye-for-an-eye, a tooth-for-a-tooth retaliation or official action from and by responsible authorities. Occasionally poking fun at a friend's eccentricities may in fact be perfectly alright, but when the object of one's burlesque buffoonery is just an acquaintance, it's nowhere near okay, and when it's done on a constant basis over a significant period of time, it's flat-out deserving of a slap – and a spit – on the face. And while I am not yet a caribou (not yet, not yet), I am well on my way to becoming one – and so too should you all be.

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