I’ve been thinking about this subject for the last ten days. It was meant to be written ten days ago.
Something stopped me…
I didn’t have the right words.
During the last ten days, this topic passed my thoughts a number of times. What tipped me over is Jyoti.
Jyoti, yes India’s Braveheart. I came across a new article yesterday about the changes taking place in India after her death and cried while reading it. I got to her article after sifting through a number of articles on bullying and of young people being murdered or committing suicide after being bullied.
How many times the “notes from the author” page in my book The South African: True Colours has changed!
There were two forces that help me write with more intensity and stopped me from procrastinating any further with this book.
The second one was the murder of Ashish Lala in South Africa. While the funeral was coming to an end, I was writing the second version of the “notes from the author” page. Unfortunately, there are so many horrible crimes in the world that miss the front pages or hit international news. The death of Ashish Lala should have been international news to get the world to see how people are murdered in South Africa i.e. in a savage manner with no regard for human life.
When I look at all children, I wonder how many will fall into these three categories:
- The successful young adult i.e. the one who makes it to the other side living an amazing positive life.
- The young adult who plays the cards in order to get by in this dangerous world.
- The one heading in the direction to a criminal record or even life in prison.
I can’t help it. I am concerned about the future of our children.
If you’re the child that bullies, please reserve your comments and read right to the end.
When I look at bullying, I see three types of people in the equation too. It’s almost as if the three points up there are inverted. I see the bully, the bystander and the victim.
Okay now, this is just my theory. The number of times I’ve had to look at bullying as a subject, to go through it too, to hear what happened to others and then to read in the papers some of the horrible crimes. This is how I see the pattern.
- The successful child – The child who was bullied – and to some extent even murdered
- The bystander – The one trying to survive in the world (the child who was bullied, carries out the bullying and then tries to stop the bullying) – The risk here is that this child could become the child that bullies or would feel bad and guilty then stop.
- The child that carried out the bullying – This person could be the abused or abuser in a relationship later down the line
In all three points, there is or are victims. The one who bullies or starts bullying is usually already in a lot of pain.
Now I am no psychologist or an expert. I can say I am the expert around life experiences, reading and observation.
Lately, I’ve heard the complex story of Natalia Macuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qsZWo7ntQ
Natalia was a child who was bullied then became the child who bullied and quite bravely she started to stand up for kids that got bullied by her group and became the primary focus for the group she was in to bully her day in and day out.
The truth is Natalia has become the successful child that I talk about i.e. the one who makes it to the other side living an amazing positive life. Her story has become so powerful that she has created a channel dedicated to helping others through her experiences. Watching her video can help you understand depression more.
I’ve taken a piece from the chapter “Why you?” in my book The South African: True Colours
The next day you are almost out of the school gate when Alaiarasi stops you. You wait for her to say, “Can you go and buy some Chappies for us?” Her friends are surrounding you and just then your far cousin says quickly, “I’ll carry on.” She’s gone. You often don’t wait too long for each other in case one of you comes out late from the last class. You know what is coming and so does she. Alaiarasi says, “I saw you yesterday, you stole Chappies from me.” You hear Chappies instead of Chappy. You say, “No!” and are not given a chance to speak. They push you around and threaten you. This is now happening every day. Your far cousin leaves you behind as you come out; she knows the routine. You wish you can go home but have to stick all this and usually get home late.
Your thoughts make you nervous. Before even sitting down to have breakfast, you are afraid of what Alaiarasi might do today. It’s worse on some days whilst on others it’s lighter. You try really hard and practice what you want to say, but, when the moment comes to say it amongst all the bullying, your heart beats fast, and you feel sweaty and tense. You also breathe a lot faster and panic. You feel almost sick but think it can’t be. It’s pretty confusing to you.
This is an example of what bullying was like in the eighties.
Life gets more complicated now…
Today if you have a phone, access to the internet, access to social media accounts, still have to go to school, still bump into people you know through after-school activities, people can easily find out where you live… then this… parents, pretty much becomes a really small world to your child. I mean this is scary. It’s is absolutely scary for a child or teenager these days. The amount of damage just one person can do and the number of people that your child thinks he or she has got against him/her is beyond belief.
How and why I can tell you this?
In 2014 my ex-partner pretended to be various people on the internet. By May 2014 there was a lot of commotion in my life already. There were hate comments of me wherever I had my social media footprint. I just closed everything down and disappeared. Six months down the line (roughly July 2014) I received some texts on my phone and some WhatsApp messages. To my disbelief, I thought I was in a nightmare while reading the messages. Turns out someone opened a Facebook page cloning my very own page which I deactivated months back. People who thought were me or someone who meant well accepted the invite and got added to the page. People didn’t think anything of it i.e. six months since the page was created. The community received a picture of me on the Facebook wall with nasty things written about me. I quickly activated my old account to see what was happening. OMG! I found people I knew from childhood, family, friends, acquaintances, neighbours, people that I went to school with on the page. To be honest I really wanted to kill myself. Quite quickly I found out who were my real friends and quite quickly another good friend fought back for me which got my ex to write a comment which came up under his name. My friend quickly took a photo of the comment he wrote which my ex deleted quickly after realising that he’s just made his name public to his evil act. My friend sent me the proof which I then passed over to the police.
Again… What I want to demonstrate to you is the T. Dench Patel you see here is the successful kid (well not a kid anymore ?) I talk about on this article i.e. the one who makes it to the other side living an amazing positive life.
So… What kept me alive?
- I had no guts to kill myself even though I thought about it a lot.
- I realised the self-hatred was created from comments, being rejected by people and that I allowed it to enter me. There was just too much I was blocking myself from getting hit by. There’s only so much I could block while with regards to the rest I didn’t know how to manage it.
- I believe in my truth and God. I believed I was meant to do something much more than become the comments and rejection people threw at me.
- I began working on my values and strengthening them. I adopted silence and learnt to ignore what wasn’t healthy for me. I toughened myself up. With my case, the police acted too late, but I would advise that you seek help if your gut feeling is telling you otherwise.
- I started to practise meditation and I definitely recommend this one. I think this was one of the biggest life savers for me.
- Internet, when used correctly, is really helpful. I found loads of help on the internet through articles and YouTube.
A couple months back I spoke to an amazing lady. I met her one day by chance, but you know what blew me? She talked about bullying. I naturally thought she was the child who was bullied. She admits with courage, “actually I was the bully,” she said. You know I didn’t know whether to feel happy, sad, or pity. The person who was with me let out a big laugh! The truth was I was confused about what to say or how to react. I was interested in her story and she told me her story. That is when I realised that the child who bullies is the one going through the most pain.
She has made it to the other side living an amazing positive life. Today she is even making efforts to help against bullying and is working on a programme “to get to the kids before the bullies.”
Sooo … Did you decide who you’re going to be?
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by either purchasing one of my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to reevaluate them.
