Tough

What the hell is this?1.center-of-wisdom-knowledge

I don’t get it when people act tough, I don’t understand it. To me, when you act tough you’re just saying, “Hey! I’ve been though a lot of horrible stuff in my life. And I survived it, and now I’m ready to attack anybody, like a Pit Bull.” — I want a demeanor that says, “I’ve never been through anything at all, and I’m just a Pug, riding a decorative pillow. Where will I go today, who knows? But, I shall be carried.”

That’s great. That’s great that you want that. The real world doesn’t work like that. Some people experience trauma. Are raped. Are beaten. Are in a war. Or, like me, are bullied for years.

I don’t talk about it much because I don’t really like the pervasive whining about trigger warnings and all that on the Left. It mostly seems like a way to show off and and to punish other people, rather than something intended to actually help anyone. Ninety percent of the “trigger warning” BS is signaling and nothing else.

49380491And I know enough has been written about the whole “trigger warning” insanity, but I am going to write some more in the context of the above asinine post.

The main problem with the concept is that everyone has really different perceptions and experiences and thus really different triggers.

I wouldn’t quite call what I am about to write about a trigger (in psychology, it is called “hypervigilance to threat”), but I was bullied a lot as a kid. I didn’t take it well and was a pretty fearless fighter so I used my fists a lot out of necessity.

As a result of this I was also ambushed a lot from behind by the kids I wouldn’t surrender to, or by those who wanted to get revenge on me. In the worst instance some little monster crept up behind me with a tree branch and bashed me in the back of the head with it.

To this day, I don’t like people being behind me. It’s taken me years to train myself not to reflexively punch someone if they sneak up where I can’t see them.

Relatedly, people notice that I don’t jump or startle when something that causes most people to jump happens. I am nearly impossible to scare. Since I was six or seven, I don’t think it has ever occurred.

It’s not that I am some hardass – this is also a result of bullying, and a bit of natural personality too I’d guess.

Reacting to bullies meant that they just tried to hurt you worse. I learned not to react, but to be ready to fight and wade in and get it done. Or lose, which I often did too. I don’t have a “fight or flight” response. I have a “fight and fight more” response. safety-300x225

This is not something I’m proud of. It’s just the result of how and where I grew up, being an utter misfit (in every sense of that word) where I was raised.

For years – years – I experienced and meted out violence daily. No exaggeration, from 4th to 9th grade I got into a fistfight at least once a week, sometimes in those periods as often as once every single day for months.

As I said, I am very stubborn.

Most of my reaction to having anyone sneak up behind me is due to the one aforementioned incident where a kid named Wayne who had bullied me for years finally got tired of me fighting back and not ceding power to him and slinked up behind me and struck me over the back of the head with a large tree branch.

It nearly knocked me out but I did manage to turn around and fight him to a draw before we were separated.

Nothing was done to him. I got in trouble for it, though, and experienced headaches for weeks afterward.

the-handA large part of my utter mistrust of authority comes from how little my teachers or other authority figures did about this behavior. In fact, bullies are often lionized or coddled because they are seen as dominant and even adults are attracted to that power.

And by the way, I am not acting tough. I am tough. I had to be. I grew up in a shithole, and I survived it and made it out and am now a successful adult. That takes toughness among other things.

My upbringing in part at least made me what I am. But I had no choice about any of that. It all just happened.

I won’t apologize for what I had to do to survive.

So fuck you, Ron Fuches and anyone else who posts that. I wish we could have all had the pleasant life of gamboling about on foofy clouds, never experiencing anything harmful or traumatic.

But that just ain’t what happened. And I’m not about to apologize for it.