When I was a girl, I suffered from a medical condition that made it impossible for me to maintain control of my bladder.  I had a major surgery just before my tenth birthday that corrected this issue, but up until then, I was tortured by classmates and neighbors.  I was less than ten years old, and I vividly remember one neighbor picking up a rusty nail from a parking area across the street from our homes and suggesting that “we shove this up there so you can stop peeing your pants”.  I remember the taunts of “Christy Pissty”.  I remember being isolated, depressed, ashamed.  This is what children did to me.  Children that were seven or eight years old did this to me.

Where did they learn that hatred and violence?

In the fifth grade, after the surgery and the pant-wetting had stopped, there was this girl, Tammy, (her name is not changed to protect her identity, because she was a fucking terrible person then and she doesn’t deserve my protection).  (Also, I may be spelling her name wrong, but I have no desire to remember the correct spelling of the names of those who tortured me.)  Tammy was friends with Shawn.  Shawn had been my friend for many years, because our parents were friends and we grew up together.  Tammy had the strange idea that three persons cannot be friends together.  I’ve never understood this whole “best friend” thing, and feel like there is more than enough love to spread around.  Lots of girls somehow get an impression that this cannot be true, and that they need to secure the best friend status of one other, and eliminate any competition.

Tammy convinced Shawn to run from me on the playground.  Tammy took the time to create hand drawn cards for both Shawn and I, and then to deliver the whole cards to Shawn through the Kindergarten “mail” that was teaching them how to address letters.  I received a very large package through the Kindergarten mail service.  Everyone crowded around to see what I had been sent.  It was the cards, identical to Shawn’s, ripped into tiny pieces—a pile of hatred on display for everyone in the room.  Everyone laughed and taunted me.

Where did she learn this hatred and violence?

In high school, I became a nomad of sorts.  I didn’t connect with a single group of peers, because I had grown to mistrust people.  (Shocking.)  But I still wanted friends, obviously.  And many people failed me in this stage as well.  I would hang out with a group of boys that were nice and fun to be around, so people called me a slut.  I still had the influence of Tammy.  One Sunday night, I waited by the cold, drafty window that faced the street for my friends to pick me up to go out.  They never arrived.  “There wasn’t enough room in the car” was the reason that Shawn gave.  But they abandoned me, without a word.  Shawn felt the guilt and told me the excuse, but the rest didn’t seem to care.  And somehow I had been singled out as the one who wouldn’t go along.  I was the one crying tears of pain and loss and confusion all night.

Where did they learn this hatred and violence?

I thought college would be my respite.  New friends.  New opportunities.  It was going to be new and different and better.  And it was for a few months, until I started to have memories of childhood sexual abuse.  I confided in a few people.  Those people told other people.  Those people asked friends of my abuser if he had abused me. They asked him.  He said no. (Shocking.)  And I was immediately called a liar and a fraud and all sorts of other things.  I was once more isolated and shamed and abandoned.  I had failed my way out of college by the 3^rd semester.  Not only was I finding it very difficult to find and maintain healthy relationships, but the lack of support made the weight of dealing with the memories and nightmares heavy enough to break me.

Where did they learn this hatred and violence?

I proceeded to live out my pain.  Drinking, sex, drugs, harboring runaways, and finally marrying a man who was violently abusive.  He never hurt me while we were dating.  It wasn’t until a month after our wedding that I was first physically smacked—backhanded in the kitchen while I washed dishes.  But the ways that he harmed me weren’t just physical.  Cycles of abuse include manipulations that most cannot imagine.  It is more akin to a cult than a relationship.  Isolate, degrade, shame, and then, once control has been gained, violence against your person.  Getting pregnant gave me the reason I needed to leave.  I would have stayed until I died, I suppose, were it not for the fear that my child would learn to be like me, or like him.

After I left him, I continued on the path of addiction and struggle, even getting involved in a less violent, but just as controlling and unhealthy, relationship.  But even after I left this second relationship, and I worked to regain control of my own life, and to find some peace and some safety and some stability, people kept being bullies.  Church friends would judge me.  Family would challenge me.  Poverty became a reason to treat me poorly, and being a single parent became a reason to shame me.  There was always someone, somewhere actively working to harm and humiliate.  There was never a place where I was safe from harm.  I was always attacked, in some form.

Where did they learn this hatred and violence?

I’ve gotten to a point where I can mediate between the world and my heart in more effective ways.  I’ve been in therapy and on medication for a few years now, following my diagnosis of PTSD.  I’m learning to care less about the things others say and do.  I’m learning to find self-compassion and self-definition, instead of relying on others to tell me who I am and what I am worth.

I still have the occasional bully in my sphere.  It is difficult to get rid of them altogether.  There are so many who are pursuing their self-interest at the expense of all others.  There are so many who are looking at their decisions only from their perspective, and ignoring the impact that exists beyond their own interests.

Where did they learn this hatred and violence?

And it is hatred and violence to ignore the plight of others in order to gain more money or status or freedom or stuff for yourself.  It is hatred and violence to isolate, to shame, to deny equal rights, to deny basic human rights, and to ignore the pain of others.

I was raised in a conservative religious setting, and I obtained two seminary degrees, so I often default to the bible when I look to quote something that expresses the ways that actions are rooted in hatred and violence.  The Good Samaritan parable of the enemy of the harmed caring for him when his own religion and state and race abandoned him to death is one of those very easily quoted parables.  Your own interests are not good excuses for not caring for others is the basic lesson in that story.  But there are also many passages that talk about putting first the interests of the poor and the refugee and the sick and the imprisoned and a host of others who may be marginalized.  There are also many that speak to the judgment that will come down upon those who do not have love as the basis of their actions.

I often find it ironic and sad that the place where I grew up, and the people I know from my history, were often so filled with hatred and violence while they assumed they were in the role of the good Samaritan.  They thought they were the hero in the story.  But they were not and are not.  They are the villains.  They are the bullies.

Since the election the other day, there have been numerous reports of hatred and violence.  Swastikas and n-words and the simple moniker “Trump” have been graffitied everywhere from the sides of cars to the doors of prayer rooms.  Muslim women have stopped the religious practice of wearing burqa or hijab out of fear.  Children are taunting other children, with deportation or isolation or death being named as the fate of brown and black and Muslim students.

Where did they learn this hatred and violence?

They learned it by watching a bully become the president-elect of their country.  They learned it from the rhetoric they hear in the news and around the dinner table.  They learned it by watching the adults in this country make the grave error of choosing a man who spouts hatred and incites violence at every turn as their leader.  They learned it by living in a society that places self-interest above the health and vitality of the society.  We would rather burn with big screens than live peacefully with one another and share resources.

Donald Trump is the Tammy of my current situation.

The threat to end healthcare for millions is a real threat for me. I am chronically ill.  I qualify for Medicaid under the expansion required by the ACA.  I will not have healthcare if that is repealed.  And, without the other ACA requirement of insuring people regardless of pre-existing condition, I will likely be uninsurable.  I’ve had about 200 appointments and four surgeries this year.  I take 18 medications right now.  I see between two and seven doctors per week.  All of this care keeps me in a state of disability, but a rung or two up the ladder from death.  Without this care, I will drop down to the death rung.  I die.

Without food stamps, without insurance, without housing assistance, and without disability, I die.  Losing any one of them will potentially cause the loss of all others.  My life is in danger, because we (and by “we” I mean the electoral college and don’t include myself at all) elected the bully.

When I was left crying that night by the window, left behind by my “friends”, I am relatively certain that all the people present didn’t want me to be abandoned and harmed, but at least one of them did. And by following the lead of that person or persons, friends that had been such for a lifetime were lost.  The effects were devastating, and each person who went silently along in that car was responsible for my pain, because they didn’t put an end to that pain.

Taking stock of my life, and seeing the ways that bullies operate, and the ways that their actions affect others, I am trapped in a serious situation once more.  After living through all the things that I have lived through, and enduring all the struggle while another profited from my demise, I see clearly the ways that electing a bully will impact the nation.  The people who have let this go on, and who have elected a bully, are committing themselves to the ideals of bullying.  They are allowing hatred and violence to win the day, and to rule the country.

I need to ask you, are you going to be the boy with a rusty nail, or the Tammy, or the abusive husband, or the manipulator/cult leader/champion for hatred and violence?

My childhood, my teens, my adult life—every moment and every experience—could have been radically different if the people around me had not been conditioned to consider themselves before others, above others, and in control of others.  The people around me learned it by watching other people (probably their parents) adopt and embrace individualism and reject care and compassion and empathy for others.  Whether you are using the choices one makes or the color of one’s skin as the litmus test for whether you shame and isolate and judge and harm, you are doing harm.  By considering only your own interests, you are doing harm.  By leading with your fear and reactionary instincts, instead of using facts and thoughtful consideration, you are doing harm.  By voting for a bully, you are doing harm.

Where did you learn such hatred and violence?

And why don’t you seek to unlearn hatred and violence and, instead, live in love and peace?

Why do you choose to remain the bully?