For a wide variety of reasons, I've been thinking a good
deal this week about bullies. It's been
a roller coaster of a week with good, bad, and everything else in-between
popping up at various intervals, and everything -- the good, the bad, and many
of the "everything elses" has me thinking about bullies.
I strongly dislike bullies.
And really -- who doesn't? Who
among us thinks, "man, I really like bullies. I think they're great." Nobody.
So, I guess that's really an unnecessary statement; however, I really dislike
bullies. I am over bullies, and over
bullying, and I'm tired of being angry about bullies and their bully ways. Over the past few years, I think I've met
more than my fair share of bullies. It
happens. It's not fun, but it
happens. (I am defining bully here as: someone
who uses their power, strength, or influence to intimidate, belittle, or harm others).
My question today comes from this: I was offered a really
wonderful, amazing job (and I said yes).
This job is at the organization I have worked at now for 2.5 years, in
which I have moved up the training ranks, until now, when I will no longer be
in training. When I applied for this
organization 2.5 years ago, there was a bully standing in my way.
"We've never gotten anyone in there," Dr. X told
me. "You're wasting your
application."
"It's out of your league," she said. "There's no way you're getting in. You're wasting your time and money."
"You need to change your list. I can't approve this. Put (these sites you don't want to go to) on
your list instead."
I continued moving forward, telling her that I understood
her point. I changed my list a bagillion
ways, trying to reach a compromise, but I left that one site on there. It was my number 1 choice. This was the place I wanted to be. This was what I had been working
towards. This was my chance to do exactly what it was I wanted to do. And there she stood, intimidating and
condescending, right in my way. In all
honesty, it came down to two things: (1) she wanted to wield her power in such
a way that those around her would tremble in fear; (2) she had issues with me,
personally (for reasons, but not reasons that were my fault, and not reasons
that I will explain here. These
conversations took place in a much larger context that was awful, and painful
and oppressive and not my fault).
Eventually, I submitted the list (without Dr. X's total
permission). A few weeks later, I got an
interview. A few weeks later, I was
accepted as an intern. A year after
that, they accepted me as a post-doc. A
year later as a second year post-doc.
And now, they've offered me a job.
Thank goodness I didn't listen to "out of my league," right?
When I told some people close to me about the job, I said,
"it kind of makes me want to send an email to Dr. X."
"Why?" they asked.
"What would you say?"
"How about 'Dear Dr. X, Fuck you.'"
"You don't really want to say that," they said.
"Oh, but I do," I said, nodding vehemently.
"No you don't.
She helped you. You should write
her a thank you note. You should tell
her that you appreciate that she helped you grow in the face of adversity. I'm sure she would love to hear from you."
And I wish they hadn't said that. I know it was well-intentioned. I know it was because they don't want to
think that somebody made something hard for me.
I know it was because these particular people have swept that whole era
of my life under the rug such that we pretend that it doesn't exist. But I am so tired of that message, and all of
the other messages that go along with it.
I am tired of hearing that I
can't feel/shouldn't feel/am not really angry/sad/pissed off. I am tired
of feeling like I have to make sense of things that make no sense, and like
I need to be grateful for things
towards which I feel no gratitude.
Don't get me wrong -- I have a very active, passionate,
meaningful, and important gratitude practice that has brought me intense
meaning and joy. This practice, however,
developed in opposition to people telling me to be grateful, or appreciative, or happy
about things from which I derived no happiness or gratitude or appreciation. "Just be grateful it wasn't worse,"
I was told. "You can feel glad that
all this is happening to make you a better person," someone said. "Look on the bright side. Be happy that you'll come out of this a better
psychologist," many people told me.
But I wasn't grateful about those things. I wasn't glad. I wasn't happy. I'm all about making the most of what life
gives you, but some lemons just don't make good lemonade. Sometimes, there's power in just letting
those lemons be lemons. Sometimes, the
strength does not come from making something sweet and tasty out of something
sour and bitter, but from saying, "that right there? That's a fucking lemon, y'all, and it's
bitter, and it's sour, and it sucks.
It's a lemon, and it
sucks." Some lemons deserve to just
be labeled as lemons, because there's nothing good that can come from them.
However, if the lemons are bad, maybe you pick up a lime
next to it. Or maybe you ditch the
lemonade idea and decide you want orange juice, or iced tea, or a
margarita. And then? When you stand up and say, "THAT is a
lemon," and you walk away, and you drink that delicious margarita
instead...THEN you can be grateful. THEN
you can practice gratitude because you can say, "life just kept giving me
all these fucking lemons, and they sucked...so I tried the margaritas, which are
pretty damn delicious, so I am GRATEFUL for margaritas!" And isn't
that what gratitude's about, really?
It's not about making the awful into something good. It's about finding the thing that is delicious,
in spite of all the suck.
You start to feel, though, when you keep getting these
messages, that somehow, you owe something to the bullies. Somehow, we owe them a word of thanks. We owe them some recognition in our own mind
or in our meaning-making or in our conversations with others. When we tell these stories of triumph and
overcoming, it's like we owe the bullies some sort of gratitude for being a catalyst
in making our kick-assness happen. Like
somehow, we would have been a little less kick-ass if people weren't tearing us
down. Like somehow, they helped us to
prove that we're awesomesauce, and that without them breaking our spirits, we
would have been a smidge less awesome.
And that's a bunch of bullshit.
If I hadn't gone through what I did in grad school, I'd
still be plenty kick-ass. If Dr. X had
been supportive and wonderful and given me gifts of rainbows and sunshine from
day one...I STILL would have been kick-ass.
Anything and everything that I have done has come from me, and from me
alone. I do not owe her or the other
bullies anything. I do not owe them my
gratitude. I do not owe them my
survival. I do not credit them with my
survival. They do not get to own my
awesome.
So may it be.
Congratulations on your job!
ReplyDeleteAnd a big "fuck you" to Dr. X. You owe that asshole nothing, especially not gratitude. Let her be a 0 in your life.
And one more thing: Most people will say they don't like bullies, but it's not true. Plenty of people like bullies, and often they even know the bullies are bullies. But as long as they're not the ones being bullied, it's not their problem. Unfortunately, the most some people can say is "I don't like to be bullied," because most bullies do not lack friends.