Sharing

Sunday 3/17/24

Spoke to a friend yesterday who told me that over the past week he probably spent sixteen hours at his kid's school in addition to all of the meetings with her therapist. There's a bad situation that has gone on for some time. Often his girl refuses to go to school, she doesn't communicate what the issue is, has been becoming more riddled with anxiety. Earlier in the week my friend told me his wife cries in the morning. It's the other kids. This girl doesn't have any friends, she's picked on, scared, and it's a violent school where these times being the times they are, certain groups are allowed to get away with everything because no one--among the adults, that is--wants to get in trouble and be "cancelled," but you're supposed to pretend that's not how it works. This kid lives in terror. Sundays are bad because she dreads going back. It doesn't stop when she gets home because of social media. Another girl in her school was attacked the other day and is now in the hospital. The girls who attacked her filmed it and put that on social media. My friend's kid is so impacted now that she can't order her own food when they go to a restaurant. I've reached out to her a few times in the past, and yesterday I sent this text to her mom, which I think has relevance to other parties as well, so I include it here.

We moved from CT to Illinois after my sophomore year of high school. I went from a public school to an all-boys school. I was a big hockey star, and I was much smarter than everyone. Teachers, adults, it didn’t matter. And that made things rough for me in CT. When you’d think it would be the other way around. Anyway, we moved, and I was picked on so bad that before Christmas of my junior year, I was done playing hockey. For two years I didn’t have a single friend. I was hated. I kept getting smarter, learning more, writing more. During those two years, I didn’t eat at school once. I had no one. I spent the time in the library. My mom told me some years after he died that sometimes she’d find my dad in my room crying. I’m sharing this with you—and feel free to let ( ) read this—because it’s important to understand that the way we’re treated sometimes can be about things that have to do much more with others than with ourselves. And quite often, insecurity and envy is what leads to people acting hatefully. If someone is at their level, they’re less likely to treat them so horribly. When someone is going through something like this, it’s easy to blame yourself. To lose confidence. To get so down on yourself. To think it’s your fault, and what you lack. Knowing that’s not why what is happening is happening doesn’t solve the problem. Other things do. That can be help we get from others, but ultimately it’s what we find inside of ourselves. Our strength. The wisdom we acquire. But in the interim, it matters a great deal that we don’t lose sight of who we are and what we offer. I’m someone who knows and knows from experience. So I just wanted to share that with you, and so you can share that with her.