I’ve been away for over a month – I needed a breather from all that the world had to offer at the time. And honestly, I thought I’d be back with a banger of a post, something out of this world, exciting to read and experience. I would like to apologise right away because that is not the case or the cause for this post.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to endure a conversation. I say “endure” because that is what I had to do. I survived it – at the cost of certain trauma, of course. But I survived it. And that I consider is a privilege.

I encountered someone who for lack of a better term I would like to refer to as a terrible ‘human’ being, someone who completely lacked the common decency one human being would show another just so.

I’d like to choose to explain how such an interaction would affect someone like me, a highly sensitive person instead of going into the conversation itself.

I replayed the conversation I had had with them in my mind countless times, calculated the different responses that could have replaced the actual one; I replayed the scenario, considering how it could have been different if I had acted differently somehow; I lost sleep because my mind refused to stop going through that conversation over and over and over again; I wondered if I was the cause of it; I wondered if I could have stopped it from escalating; I wondered if I could have avoided it altogether; I blamed myself for all of these reasons; I tormented myself over something that was completely out of my control. And this tape played on and on till my mind finally came to accept what it had known all along but the trauma had refused to allow it to process – what I dealt with was a bully. No matter how I had responded, it would not have been received the way it was intended. There is nothing that I could have done to have made the situation better, or different.

This is what bullies do. They target someone they consider weak, and direct all of that hate and negativity that they carry within them onto that person so that they can survive, so that they can feel strong and powerful. While an unsuspecting victim gets to carry the weight of this hurt laid on them and struggle to put one step in front of the other, for no reason that was their own but out of the spitefulness of another.

Bullies do what they do so that they can break a person down in order for them to feel stronger. They can’t see the bigger picture, let alone what’s right in front of their noses. To them, at that moment, it is about instant gratification and nothing else.

Contradictory to what the title of my post says, bullying is not art, but the way it is sometimes disguised can make it feel so to the bullies themselves – the sense of accomplishment they achieve from their own feeling of overpowering another.

To be absolutely emphatic in my understanding of it, it is a form of narcissism. And as we all know, you can’t fight a narcissist and win. You can’t push back against a bully. But is avoiding & enduring the only options we have open to us? Is there no way to stand up to this age-old practise of arrogance and disrespect for one life against another?

I have in time worked through my feelings of anger, hurt, discomfort and shame with this person and her team. But I am open to suggestions and thoughts.

We live in 2024 and are inching closer to 2025 where there is so much information and resources available online and support to battle this practise, and yet it is so prevalent today.

What are some of the things that have helped you endure bullying at any stage of your life? What are your thoughts of accept & endure/accept & avoid being the only way to move forward in similar scenarios? How do you quieten the voices in your head after such an experience?

Do you think that it’s okay to just let them be at the cost of hurting another unsuspecting soul? Would it affect your conscience if it happened again, and to someone else, and you knew that you could have prevented it in some way, or would you just think that what’s meant to be will be no matter what you try to do about it?

This topic is one that holds quite a strong place in my heart and in my mind. It is a subject that has directed most of the decisions I have made in my life. It is something that I feel very strongly about. I am who I am today because of it, despite it.

And I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Here is mine.

Love always,