Monday, February 08, 2010
When i was being bullied, the strongest weapons my enemies possessed was their capacity to make me complicit in the process. To make me a willing victim.
That's how the most successful and dangerous bullies work: they make their victims agree to what is happening to them.
The best ones even manage to hide from their victims the fact they are being bullied at all.
I never used to see myself as being oppressed as a transsexual, for instance. If i suffered and felt bad about myself, i reasoned, it was because I was a bad person. And so deserved it.
If my beliefs and opinions were discounted and jeered at, it was because they were worthless.
If my dreams never came to be, it was because they were impossible and absurd.
And so on.
I consented to remaining a victim because there did not seem to be an alternative.
I couldn't see one.
And I rejected or was unable to listen to anyone who seemed to offer me one.
And I learned to numb myself to the suffering, to detach myself from it.
Even to find it preferable in its constant, almost reassuring presence, to the unknown terrors of the world beyong the bully's prison walls.
And then to take the first steps to escape the bullying do feel agonising: because it somehow involves taking on board all the pain you've learnt to shut down from.
Freedom comes at a cost: but nothing else is truly worth paying for.
That's how the most successful and dangerous bullies work: they make their victims agree to what is happening to them.
The best ones even manage to hide from their victims the fact they are being bullied at all.
I never used to see myself as being oppressed as a transsexual, for instance. If i suffered and felt bad about myself, i reasoned, it was because I was a bad person. And so deserved it.
If my beliefs and opinions were discounted and jeered at, it was because they were worthless.
If my dreams never came to be, it was because they were impossible and absurd.
And so on.
I consented to remaining a victim because there did not seem to be an alternative.
I couldn't see one.
And I rejected or was unable to listen to anyone who seemed to offer me one.
And I learned to numb myself to the suffering, to detach myself from it.
Even to find it preferable in its constant, almost reassuring presence, to the unknown terrors of the world beyong the bully's prison walls.
And then to take the first steps to escape the bullying do feel agonising: because it somehow involves taking on board all the pain you've learnt to shut down from.
Freedom comes at a cost: but nothing else is truly worth paying for.
Labels: Bullying
Monday, February 01, 2010
3 glimpses of manhood:
ONE:
Someone sent me a link to this picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with a young person that on first glance I identified as a girl.
http://www.life.com/image/3092113/in-gallery/38742
... but which after reading the caption I can now only identify as male.
I wonder what happened to him.
I imagine him going through the rite of passage of being seperated from his mother, having his hair cut, and being forced into the ugly uniform of the public schoolboy.
Toughened up and turned into a man.
And looking at that picture in the context of a generalised misogyny I can understand, somehow, why even up to my childhood the male-dominated culture viewed it as unhealthy for sons to grow up too close to their mothers.
TWO:
In the gym this morning a man came onto the treadmill next to mine. A male staff member was going round checking on the machines, and they engaged in "banter".
The man said his machine was OK, it was just him that had something wrong (I suspect like me he was in "heart rehabilitation") and the staff member asked him if he'd like to volounteer for euthanasia? Because if so he would be happy to give him a hand. I can think of lots of my friends who would think the same, the man said, and my wife would probably agree with them. It's the only thing they like about her, he added. Wittily.
And the whole exchange, in its sneering denial of friendship and affection, struck me as totally appalling.
But for them it was inconsequential.
THREE
Then i went onto the cross machine. Because my feet don't touch the ground and jar my knees, it is the only way I can ever jog. I set myself a target of doing a kilometre in 6 minutes. Which in the context of the three minute mile does not seem like that much of n achievement. But for me, approaching sixty with sore knees and two years after a heart operation, is actually quite something. I did it with three seconds to spare.
And only then became aware that i can completely forgotten to be in feedback with myself and was unpleasantly out of breath.
And that reminded me of how much we were encouraged to lose touch with our own bodies, ignore all the message they sent us, and push on regardless.
Which is so damaging.
ONE:
Someone sent me a link to this picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with a young person that on first glance I identified as a girl.
http://www.life.com/image/3092113/in-gallery/38742
... but which after reading the caption I can now only identify as male.
I wonder what happened to him.
I imagine him going through the rite of passage of being seperated from his mother, having his hair cut, and being forced into the ugly uniform of the public schoolboy.
Toughened up and turned into a man.
And looking at that picture in the context of a generalised misogyny I can understand, somehow, why even up to my childhood the male-dominated culture viewed it as unhealthy for sons to grow up too close to their mothers.
TWO:
In the gym this morning a man came onto the treadmill next to mine. A male staff member was going round checking on the machines, and they engaged in "banter".
The man said his machine was OK, it was just him that had something wrong (I suspect like me he was in "heart rehabilitation") and the staff member asked him if he'd like to volounteer for euthanasia? Because if so he would be happy to give him a hand. I can think of lots of my friends who would think the same, the man said, and my wife would probably agree with them. It's the only thing they like about her, he added. Wittily.
And the whole exchange, in its sneering denial of friendship and affection, struck me as totally appalling.
But for them it was inconsequential.
THREE
Then i went onto the cross machine. Because my feet don't touch the ground and jar my knees, it is the only way I can ever jog. I set myself a target of doing a kilometre in 6 minutes. Which in the context of the three minute mile does not seem like that much of n achievement. But for me, approaching sixty with sore knees and two years after a heart operation, is actually quite something. I did it with three seconds to spare.
And only then became aware that i can completely forgotten to be in feedback with myself and was unpleasantly out of breath.
And that reminded me of how much we were encouraged to lose touch with our own bodies, ignore all the message they sent us, and push on regardless.
Which is so damaging.
Labels: manhood
Friday, January 29, 2010
I happened to turn on the tv today and saw a very beautiful film about Sibelius
http://picasaweb.google.com/ibnunajib/LeaveToRemain?feat=email#
I knew that Sibelius was, in effect, silent for the last twenty or so years of his life and because I fear silence more that anything, and feel so imperative a command to resist it.. and because I was under the impression Sibelius had chosen silence I was somehow never really drawn to him.
And yet there is so much in him that I can relate to.
The fact he had to pay at the beginning to have his symphonies performed, that he lost money in the process. that he had to struggle against debt.
His ferocious capacity for self criticism. the appalling struggle to resist chaos and to create...
All this moved me so profoundly.
The constant struggle to find expression for what had to be said...
As I struggle, not at all in the same league (but that doesn't matter) struggle to get Every One into the best shape the script can be in for rehearsals...
In the times when I would find myself being sent abroad and put up in international hotels, i would turn on the TV and look in horror at the multiplicity of channels, and the power that represents, and the appalling low quality of the material they were transmitting, and feel so puny and helpless in the face of it all. Struggling to complete my works for tiny theatres...
And I am aware how the works never measure up to the power and the scope of the dreams that inspire them.
And Sibelius burning the movements of his last symphony that he had, after years of struggle, managed to complete...
How important to focus, somehow, on what can and has been achieved.
And try not to be obsessed by what has not.
http://picasaweb.google.com/ibnunajib/LeaveToRemain?feat=email#
I knew that Sibelius was, in effect, silent for the last twenty or so years of his life and because I fear silence more that anything, and feel so imperative a command to resist it.. and because I was under the impression Sibelius had chosen silence I was somehow never really drawn to him.
And yet there is so much in him that I can relate to.
The fact he had to pay at the beginning to have his symphonies performed, that he lost money in the process. that he had to struggle against debt.
His ferocious capacity for self criticism. the appalling struggle to resist chaos and to create...
All this moved me so profoundly.
The constant struggle to find expression for what had to be said...
As I struggle, not at all in the same league (but that doesn't matter) struggle to get Every One into the best shape the script can be in for rehearsals...
In the times when I would find myself being sent abroad and put up in international hotels, i would turn on the TV and look in horror at the multiplicity of channels, and the power that represents, and the appalling low quality of the material they were transmitting, and feel so puny and helpless in the face of it all. Struggling to complete my works for tiny theatres...
And I am aware how the works never measure up to the power and the scope of the dreams that inspire them.
And Sibelius burning the movements of his last symphony that he had, after years of struggle, managed to complete...
How important to focus, somehow, on what can and has been achieved.
And try not to be obsessed by what has not.
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