Lies Bullies Tell

According to Merriam-Webster, "dehumanizing" is "depriving someone of human qualities, personality, or dignity." That is exactly what bullies do—they take away your dignity and treat you as less than human.  Our society has always valued some people over others. The beautiful, the wealthy, those without flaws are looked up to, while those who are different or poor or ugly or "less than" are considered sub-human. It's as though your imperfections make you a non-human who exists for the bully's amusement. Years after I was bullied, I realized that to my middle school bullies, I wasn't a person, I was entertainment, nothing more than a diversion from the boredom known as Biology 101.  

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When you spend days, weeks, even years being treated as a nobody who does not deserve to be treated with dignity, something in you dies. The longer the bullying lasts, the harder it can be to see yourself as a person with the right to live a bully-free life. 

The power of a name is an odd thing because names are intrinsically tied to our identity. Bullies may give you a nickname to exert power over you. What you don't realize is that soon you begin believing the nickname is who you really are.

 

I ceased being “Ellie Sparrow, beloved daughter” I was now “Bookworm” thanks to my glasses, braces, and a love for books. Honestly, you wouldn’t have found a nerdier-looking girl in our entire 9th grade, so I couldn’t argue that the name was apropos. And here’s the problem—bullies have a knack for coming up with the most appropriate nicknames, which makes it even harder for you to fight against them. It wasn't that the name was so bad, it's that the nickname reminded me that I wasn't who I thought I was. I was who the bully saw me as, not beloved but ugly and nerdy. 

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No one has the right to rename us, and telling the bully, as I was too afraid to do, “You’re lying. That’s not my name!” may be the first step in reclaiming a bully-free identity. 

This is the lie that nearly destroyed me. I believed that I should be bullied because I was just too ugly and uncool to deserve anything else. Maybe you aren't bullied for how you look but for a mistake you made or for something you said that you wish you could take back. Whatever you have done, no one has the right to abuse you. 

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I was 40 years old when I read Wounded Spirit by Frank Peretti, a man who had experienced terrible bullying in school. His book helped me to see that I believed this lie, and it contributed to how I lived my life even after high school. 

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The first two lies I’ve mentioned flow into this one, like murky creeks oozing into a swamp of hopelessness and evil. No matter how we look or how unsocialized and annoying we might act, bullies have no right to bully. (Of course, this doesn't mean not having common sense and doing ridiculous things that could cause problems.) No one has the right to abuse you. Ever! 

In school, I figured I would always be bullied and there was nothing I could do about it. I did tell my parents who told the teachers, and they tried to stop it, I know they did. But let’s be honest, there’s only so much a teacher can do. I remember several times when I did stand up for myself and the bullies backed off, at least for a time. You are allowed to stand up for yourself, but that can be hard if you believe the bully is right, which is why we need to see the truth instead of the bullies’ lies.

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Bullies only bully as long as there’s no one to stop them. They CAN be stopped, and that knowledge also takes away the bullies’ power.