...What?

Throwing out their toys will just make them bitter assholes, you seem really bitter I'm guessing your parents threw out your toys. What you do is take them away and not tell them when they'll get them back. My mom did that to me, eventually she just gave it back, sometimes it took a couple years. Throwing them out is like throwing out money. Legos are NOT cheap, you don't just throw them away.

If more people would actually punish their kids, maybe there wouldn't be so many bratty kids throwing fits and bullying the good kids. I got spanked as a kid and it didn't turn me into a psycho. It taught me consequences. Do something bad, get a bad result. Do something good, get a good result. Failure to teach kids this simple truth turns them into assholes.

No, life made me bitter. I learned what not to do very quickly. Without going too deeply into my personal life story, I have reasons for being so bitter. First: my mother died when I was 6. I held her hand as she died from cancer. The doctors gave her 3 months, she held on for a year. Dad had to file bankruptcy to get out from under the debt. We proceeded to continue going deeper into debt as more problems arose from that result. Other kids bullied me simply because I was too different. I didn't have a mom. We were always poor, so I rarely had anything interesting to talk about. I walked with a limp (birth defect with my left knee). So because of those reasons, I got picked on. Teachers didn't do anything about it, but I added "tattletale" to my list of reasons to pick on me. Through third grade, most kids didn't get physical about it. They called me names and made me feel bad, but I developed a method of just shutting down my emotions and riding it out. Fourth grade arrived and kids found out that it was fun to just punch me out of nowhere. Again, teachers and staff did nothing, and so the constant beatings kept coming. The one time I hit back, the principal got the cops involved because I clobbered her son. Dad got me out of trouble with pictures of what I looked like coming home some times. Sixth grade, we changed schools, but because I came from a different school, it gave a reason to pick on me. I was picked on for being a geek, a nerd, for being weird, for being poor (still, as we hadn't ever really recovered, though we'd stabilized by then), and so I just relied on shutting myself down repeatedly. Seventh and Eighth grade involved beatings by other students, but again I learned a trick to just shut down and ignore it. At that point, someone decided that the best thing they could do was to shoot me with a rubber band at point blank distance. They hit me in the left eye. Of course, because of my experiences before, I just rode it out, even though I knew there'd been damage. My left eye sees about as good as your peripheral vision, just for reference. Then I got into high school, and by then I was already bitter. I hated everyone. I didn't trust anyone. I rarely talked. I had teachers afraid I would be one of those kids who brings guns to school and decides to clear classrooms. The principal made it his duty to try and peel back what amounted to 8 years of mental armor, to find out what made me tick, to learn if I was dangerous. He'd seen my record, wanting me to help him understand why I behaved how I behaved. I confided only slightly, not willing to trust another stranger. Of course, while he didn't betray me, some students had seen me going into the principal's office. You know how kids are: if they've done something wrong to someone and that someone's talking to an adult, they assume you're ratting them out. I got beaten bloody on the way home. As in "hospital visit" bloody. After I recovered a month later, they tried it again. After all, it's fun to beat on the crippled pauper, isn't it? One of them hit me with a tree branch and I snapped. I don't remember the fight too clearly, other than the fact that after that, no one went to hit me again. I walked home with my hands bloody, all of it my own. I got in trouble for fighting. Yeah, I got grounded for defending myself from the same three kids who put me in the hospital a month before. Then high school ends and dumps me out into trying to find a job in the worst recession since the Great Depression. Took me two years to get one. So I think I've earned the right to be bitter, don't you think? And before you go spouting off "Oh, you should've sued..." don't. That takes money. That takes lawyers, who take money. And kids are smart. They pick on people who don't have money because they're less likely to do something about it. They pick on people who won't fight back. Even to this day I catch hell from coworkers who wonder why I'm "so slow" when my knee hurts or "can't find something right in front of his face" because it's on my left side and I can't see it. So, yeah, I'm bitter. Life gave me lemons, I tried to make lemonade, but without sugar, all you can make is sour juice.

You have the right to be bitter if you want. Just don't make the mistake that I made for years; don't go thinking you deserve to be bitter. You seem like a good person despite all the crap you went through. If those kids had learned the difference between right and wrong from their parents, you would have had an easier time growing up. If teachers could actually DO anything about kids with no moral compass without their idiot parents suing the school, you would have had an easier time. Sadly, any douche bag with the right parts and no sense can have kids so we are always going to be dealing with little demonspawn with no discipline. It's the parents that plan on having kids that turn their little ickle dumplings into ungrateful spoiled brats due to them not believing that THEIR child could misbehave or that stupid idea that "oh well, boys will be boys" that is screwing everything up almost worse than the "oops, baby" parents. I wish you would have to take an I.Q. test and acquire a license prior to being a parent.

Thank you, Katt. I know I don't deserve to be bitter, it's just my outlook on life at this point. Whenever someone says they have faith in humanity, I simply state that my faith in humanity died long ago. I know not everyone is that bad, just that I've been surrounded by assholes for years.

As it's been two years since that post, I've since gotten a bit better. I still have little faith in humanity, but that's not something likely to change. I think, in a way, making that post was my way of healing, by giving voice to what had happened in a more-or-less open environment, one where, while it may not have been the best place for it, others could see it. Maybe it had little to do with the original post, but I do feel better having written it, more so than I would have if I'd simply done so as an 'open letter' on the desktop. Plus, it somewhat stands as an open letter to parents about the long-term effects of bullying. It affects the one being bullied far longer, and much more than anyone really seems to think. Everyone thinks it's short-term, that it'll blow over and once the bully is gone, the feelings stop. True. But what about the things we do to cope with the aftermath of it? They don't stop. Not immediately, and not for some time after. Sometimes, it changes you, makes you less outgoing, less friendly because you've been betrayed before. Less willing to try something new or to make new friends because they'll just turn against you, too. It took a long time for me to get back to where I am now, being a little less bitter and a little less riled up at the world. The important thing is, I did it on my own. I healed on my own. Slowly, yes, and maybe not completely, but a little is better than not at all. I try to keep optimistic, to think positively when confronted with something that's gone wrong, rather than to be all doom-and-gloom like before. It's not easy, but it makes the days a little better.

No nightlight! Lol