There are two things that irritate and anger me more than anything. Domestic Violence and Bullying. Both are senseless and cause more harm than anything else.
Domestic Violence:
Yesterday a very sweet woman died due to domestic violence. She was one of the nicest people in school and of the brief conversations I have had with her over the years, she had not changed much. We have all heard that sayings, "Love Hurts" "Love is Blind" but the truth is that love should never hurt, certainly not physically. Blindness comes when we refuse to see that the other person is no good for us. It comes when we know that he needs help, and that we should leave him, but feel that we can change him.
You can't.
The only one that can change him is him. He has to want to change and he has to want to get help. Sometimes I feel that for a lot of women the line in marriage vows, "For better or worse" should be removed. This line is meant for hard times in a marriage (or relationship), certainly, financial issues, loss of a job, loss of a child, possibly an affair, but it absolutely does not include violence. Violence is the exception. The first time your partner hurts you physically, is the time to leave. Not the time to rationalize it, not the time to say, he didn't mean it, time to LEAVE.
He may not have meant it, but he did it and he will do it again, especially when drugs are involved. He needs help, but you need to get out. Love is not painful, burning dinner is not a crime, arguing with someone should not land you in the hospital. Whatever the reason, it will happen again. Domestic Violence ends when women (and men) refuse to be abused. When you stand up for yourself and say, I refuse to let you hurt me. Love certainly can be blind.
Bullying:
This needs to end to. Columbine should set the example of what happens when children are bullied, left out or the target of bullying. Not only is it bad enough that children can be bullied at school, where they should feel safe, now there is cyber bullying. Parents need to take action. YOUR children are the ones causing other people's children to go into a school with a gun and kill people. Innocent people. It is not innocent fun when someone's child is lying on the ground of their school, dead.
We all sympathize with the dead. The children who were gunned down, but what about the shooter? Does anyone stop to think about them and what caused them to do something this heinous? No. People just want justice (and rightly so) but where was the justice when your child was bullying the one who decided to kill everyone?
The shooter didn't wake up one day and decide to kill classmates. We all sympathize with the women who is beaten day after day who finally kills her tormentor, but no one sympathizes with bullied child who goes to school to end his/her torment. No one should die because of bullying or domestic violence, but the truth is prolonged harassment or violence changes a person. It changes them inside and creates something else entirely. Something broken that leads them to kill their tormenters. It doesn't happen over night. It doesn't even happen over a few incidents. It happens over years of daily psychological torment. A battered women who kills her spouse is not different than the bullied student who kills his classmates.
It is worse when it is children that are killed for sure. When it is your child lying dead on the ground because one child was bullied. It is worse because school is where children should feel safe not fear for their lives. Home s where we should feel safe as well. Yet these are the two places where the most hurt and damage is down. A bullied child could once go home and escape their bullies, a domestic violence woman lives with it in her home and can't escape, unless she chooses to. Now, thanks to technology, the bullied student can't escape from it at home. Cyber-bullying is all to real and now the whole world can witness and apart of it. There is no escape.
We need to teach our children the dangers bullying can have on someone. We need to ensure that when they leave our care, they know that bullying another child can have deadly consequences. It can have repercussion no one parent, teacher or child, should ever have to face. I realize that when our children leave our home, we can't control their actions or their behavior, but we can makes sure that they know the difference between right and wrong.
The parents. Ever noticed that the parents of these children are attacked once their child kills other people? Human nature of course. Yet no one attacked the parents of the bullies while they were tormenting another child. Mostly cause the bullied child doesn't share his pain, until it becomes tragic. I sympathize with these parents because in today's society both parents work in order to survive ad the children go around unnoticed. Mom's are out working and too tired to at night to send much time with their children. Dads too. Children are left alone more often than now while their parents are out trying to support the family. You blame the parents, but in reality you should blame society as a whole. Parents who don't care that their child is bulling someone (and yes there are parents who don't care, in fact some cheer it on), but when their child dies at the hand of the classmate they bullied...all the sudden they care.
The girl I went to school with, that many of us went to school with, should not be dead this morning, making her families and those who knew her, world a darker place today. The parents of columbine should today be walking their children down the aisle, watching them go off to college and beginning a whole new chapter, yet, they are mourning their children instead.
Domestic Violence and Bullying need to stop.
Until the next Scribble......
No comments:
Post a Comment