Caterwauling

The Debilitating Scars of Bullying

“Adults who have been bullied as children can unconsciously regress into the role of the victim. They may not create situations in adulthood where they’re bullied, but they feel as if they are.”

Hmmm.

The other day, my friend Michael said, “You hide behind this ‘air sign’ b.s. and you never say what you want. I know you. You know exactly what you want. You say you’re fine with ‘whatever’ and maybe you are. But you act like you don’t care and you do. Say what you want.”

In any event, I’m not a fan of people conveniently blaming their childhood or their relationships past or jobs past, as a way of not dealing with the present.

Conveniently blaming, I said. God knows we’ve all been scarred by one or more of them.

In any event, I won’t name names or write stories. But I wonder if I really worked through some of the “feeling very small” incidents from my youngest years have contributed to the mess I can be, more than I ever realized.

I like to use the phrase “bread and circuses.” Well, I really like to use the phrase “OOOH SHINY.”

In any event, there’s a disturbing pattern in my world that can be traced back to Ancient Rome. And it’s that, when things go to shit, we have to distract ourselves with shiny and fun things.

In Ancient Rome, it was the government providing the shiny things. Here in my world, sometimes you have to provide it for yourself.

I have this recurring nightmare. It’s a circus filled with assclowns that I cannot escape. I try so very hard to run this circus and make all the performers happy. Yet they all declare mutiny and run their clown car over me.

It’s a daily nightmare lately. And the amount of mental calories it burns, if translated into body calories, would put me back at birth weight.

I don’t want to burn any more calories this way. This shit is sending my cortisol through the roof. Even when I eat right, I put on pounds. And while I don’t want to assign the blame to this recurring nightmare, I don’t think it can be denied that I am going to want to find a way to NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN.

Eternal sunshine, anyone?