Hero or Zero?

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If there are no heroes to save you, then you be the hero” – Denpa Kyoshi

I was bullied as a child. Were you? I also bullied other kids. I bet you didn’t, you’re too nice. But I did. It came naturally to me. They were not my best moments. I have tried to do my Ninth step amends as much as possible around the incidents I remember. Still, I know from my own experience, there is no way to erase the scars created by the meanness that was me as a child.

But I was a child. And stupid. Apparently, compassion doesn’t form in the human brain until we hit 25 (or much later if you’re a male or addict. Never, if you’re both.)  Children don’t know better. I was bullied at home so I bullied others. It’s always about fear and feeling “less than.” It’s never out of strength. Historians paint Hitler as a failed everything –except he was a great bully who had the unique talent of drawing other bullies to his side and giving them free reign to do their worst. 

As children what were our choices? Take it or snitch. No kid wants to be the “snitch”. That’s like painting a big red target on your face for the rest of your life. Still, sometimes it gets so bad someone does notice and intervene. When I was a kid I had a great third grade teacher who noticed I never went out at recess. I was a very athletic tomboy and it wasn’t like me not to rush to the tetherball court when the recess bell rang. She knew something was up. She took it to the Principal. Unfortunately, bullying wasn’t taken as seriously then as it is now. It’s just kids being kids. I was told to toughen up, Stop being so sensitive,  or the worst one Stop making trouble. ‘Cause that’s me, trouble-maker. Shit, I was so needy for love and approval I never wanted to cause trouble. Of course, I also have red hair, so there’s that. (And you may remember the slapping episode with Mrs. Adamske.)

No one did a thing and I, in turn, bullied a schoolmate in middle school. I probably bullied more than her, but she is the one I still feel guilty about. She was my friend and I reduced her to tears with a bunch of other girls. She didn’t deserve that. I was a jerk, pure and simple. 

Bullying that girl hurt her, no doubt. But it also hurt me and everyone who was around to watch it. They call it “vicarious abuse.” 

I learned early on not to engage my mother when she was on the warpath. I asked for a lock on my door at nine. I was all about the self-protection.

I didn’t get the lock. I got laughed at for wanting it. I would huddle in my bedroom, most of the time trying to cram myself behind the farthest piece of furniture as I listened to whatever mayhem was happening outside my door. I remember saying a little mantra as the fights swirled, “please don’t come in here, please don’t come in here.” When I wasn’t on the receiving end of the abuse (physical from my Mom and emotional from my Dad), I was a victim of  vicarious abuse.

 I went to a Naturopath last year and he listened to my family history and told me he believes my “fight or flight” instinct is on red alert at all times. I sleep with one eye open. I wait for the next shoe to drop. I’ve always got my bags packed and my walking shoes on. It’s a wonderful life.

Over the years I’ve had two opportunities to fight back against abuse. Both times I didn’t fight, I did the flight. One was a sexual abuse case and another included physical threats. I was furious the people I trusted did not protect me from the threats but I tucked my tail between my legs, convinced I would get hurt even worse if I fought, and fled. I suffered long after for their actions and my lack of action.

I bring this up today because, as is the case here on Earth School, Mimi has given me a new opportunity to fight or flee. I’m trying to decide. Can you help me?

I have this awesome job. It pays really well and I am really good at it. It’s only part time so I can write and dream and work on my Life Coaching. I moved to Wilsonville so I could be close to work.

As in any fairy tale there is always a wicked witch. In my case it is a bully boss. 

I have tried over the last 11 months to deal with this man’s horrid abuse of me and all the other employees who work for him. He yells, he pounds on the furniture, he humiliates people in front of others, he screams over your phone calls telling you what you should be saying. Bully, Bully, BULLY!!!

So I finally took umbrage when he accused me of fabricating a phone call and wrote a letter to my big boss. I had spoken with the bully boss and his boss numerous times trying to stop the abuse of myself and others. He’d be fine for a few days and then the moon would turn full or he’d get severe PMS and off he’d go again. 

The Big Boss sent my letter to Human Resources and at her counsel I resigned. She told me they have had three complaints in one year (all from women) and 150% turn-over in my department. Everyone knows this guy is a terror but they would rather let good people go (I’m good –won the bonus just last week, looks like this week too) than fix this shit. I AM PISSED!

Why should I have to give up a job I like, with people I like, a job I’m good at? Why should I, at 60, have to be pounding the pavement again and explaining why I left my last job after 11 months? It isn’t fair. (Imagine stamping and screaming.)

So. Am I my own hero or my same zero? To sue or not to sue, that is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous bully-bosses or by suing end them. To sue, to sue, perhaps to lose, aye there’s the rub. A dub-dub.

I’ve been raking my motives over the coals. Why do I want to sue? Justice? Check. Self-righteousness? Check. Money? Double-check?

What keeps coming up is the desire to learn this frickin’ lesson once and for all and step up to the plate. I want to be the HERO in my life. Finally. I want to shout at the top of my judicial lungs, 

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

Does that make me a bitch?

This Is a Dark Ride

Years ago John  Larroquette had a short-lived dramedy aptly titled “The John Larroquette Show”. It was about a alcoholic college professor who had tanked his career  and now found the only job he could get was as a night manager of an urban bus depot. Larroquette is himself a recovering alcoholic and quite public about it so I’m not breaking his anonymity here – but it’s important because he knows his shit. He knows how close he came to being that night manager instead of a TV star. I loved the show so, of course, it only lasted a season or two. If I like something you can bet the rest of America doesn’t. “Pushing Daises” anyone? “Freaks and Geeks”? I could go on but I’m already a bit depressed so why push it.

I bring up John’s show because in the pilot he put up a sign in his office he had stolen from a carnival ride. It said “This is a dark ride.” True that.

I do what I can to keep the darkness at bay. I take medication (don’t judge me), I have a “happy light” that gives me fake sunshine in the winter and I’ve been known to swallow more than my share of cod liver oil.  This is still a dark ride. Some days darker than others.

I may be out of a job and a son soon. These last few days have been trying my commitment to recovery in big ways. I think I’m doing the right things in each case, so why does it feel so scary? Sometimes I think Mimi (my Higher Power) is a sadist. I tell her that, in those dark nights of the soul, and she crackles an evil little laugh. Oh, if you only knew the truth of it, little human, she says with a shrug. Yeah, but I don’t you all-knowing, powerful c-word. (see how I made you say cunt in your head because I didn’t want to seem crude?) Mimi and I have a love-hate relationship. Kind of like ALL my relationships, now that I think of it.

The job situation came to a head on Wednesday night when I received a sweet little note from my possibly dry-drunk boss accusing me of falsifying a phone call. Now, you have to understand I work in a call center – I do not, I repeat DO NOT – do brain surgery or decide which country to bomb next. If I make a mistake –which I do – the worst outcome is that someone got the wrong finance rate and becomes a bit cranky. Still, I am an honorable person and I do my job to the best of my abilities. I am not a liar.

Those of you 12 steppers reading this know that any 12 step program is one of rigorous honesty. On the first page of the AA big Book it states this. It also states that if you do not have the ability to be completely honest, with yourself and others, you may not recover. 

Rigorous honesty is a tough nut. Luckily the program is one of progress not perfection. We’re also not supposed to hurt others if we can help it. Thus being honest at all times can be very tricky.

Here’s the truth –the searching and fearless truth – about my boss; he is an ASSHOLE. He is a pompous little British man who is always right, humiliates his employees publicly and accuses people of lying. I have tried everything I know to get along with him; humor, withdrawal, over-achieving (I was the number 1 appointment setter in August and I am part-time. No one does over-achievement like an Al-Anon) and I have even resorted to telling the truth. We have had heart to hearts where he admits things and seems contrite, he’s better for a few days and then the lure of the asshole takes him away.

Hmmmmm. This pattern seems familiar somehow? Where have I done this before? Oh yes, in my childhood, in my marriages, with friends and family and now my own child. It is the dance of the damned. 

How To Do the Dance of the Damned in 8 easy steps!

Step One – you become a floor-mat for someone to wipe their shoes on.

Step Two- you finally get so pissed you’re “not going to take it anymore.”

Step Three – confront said jerk-wad and tell them you’re “not going to take it anymore.”

Step Four – they break down in tears, apologies and tell you truths no one else has ever heard. You are now the ONLY person who (pick one) knows them, loves them, can help them. You are a Goddess!

Step Five –your anger dissolves and all your love and caring surges through your body as you commit to never, ever leave them alone with their own nasty selves.

Step Six – things are better! Honesty and your eight hour session of listening really worked! They are now the person you want them to be! Hallelujah!

Step Seven – they do something in old school mode and you just can’t believe it. It must be a mistake!

Step Eight –you become a floor-mat for someone to wipe their shoes on. 

So that’s me right now. Trying to change the dance I do at work and at home. But it’s so scary, for financial reasons at work and for heart reasons at home.

I want to be strong –a Ninja Al-Anon – but it’s hard when I might lose so much. The job can be replaced, the son can’t. And yet, I know deeply, that if I continue the dance someone is going to die. Sooner rather than later. 

Hopefully Mimi forgives me for calling her a cunt and will help me with all this

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 She knows I can’t do this dark ride alone.

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The Law of the Jungle

I am obsessed with this video; http://www.upworthy.com/2-monkeys-were-paid-unequally-see-what-happens-next?g=2.

If you don’t have time to watch it –it’s about two monkeys getting unequal payment (cucumbers and grapes) for doing the same task. It’s fascinating. Apparently, the idea of fairness is more organic than I had thought. What is also organic? The absolute indifference of the “rich” grape-getting monkey for her friends’ outrage.

Unfortunately, I have sat through too many conversations of grape eaters who not only have no compassion for their cucumber pals but even add an extra heap of scorn by blaming them. You can almost hear the grape monkey thinking, “Well, she’s obviously not working as hard as me. She must be doing the task wrong. She should pull herself up by her bootstraps.” 

The bootstrap argument has about as much relevance to monkeys as it does to humans.  Besides, I thought we had evolved . Not so much.

I heard that argument many times at my dinner table in upper middle-class Whittier. Yes, I grew up in the land of Nixon and yes, my father was a Republican.

I never quite got his argument or his total disdain for the poor. He had been very poor himself during the depression. Raised by a single mother after his alcoholic father had deserted her to raise two children alone. There was no social security or welfare then. No food stamps, WIC or anything to help  and I’m sure that many nights my father went to bed hungry.  You would have thought FDR would be a hero to such a man. He wasn’t. My father hated him.

I could understand my mother hating FDR a little better. After all her father had owned an Oldsmobile dealership during the depression and not everyone was poor. No, there were fat cats (almost the exact same ones as today) who could still buy a luxury car like an Oldsmobile. I doubt my mother was ever hungry a day in her life. For food.  And as we can see in the video, the rich monkeys don’t much care about the plight of their unfairly treated brethren. “Let them eat cucumber” the greedy little Marie Antoinette would say if she could. It was my mother’s grapes FDR was trying to share.

The irony of course, because life always provides us with ironic lessons, is that my father’s “bootstraps” said G.I. Bill on them and my mother is now completely living on welfare and medicare after having blown her money on 137 cats. (Please see earlier blog “It’s All in the Family” for that gripping tale.) How’s old FDR looking to you now, Mom? 

I believe what separates us from the animals is not intelligence but compassion.  Humans have the capacity to feel for others outside themselves, to walk in another humans shoes, to “do unto others.” Why some people develop it and others don’t is a mystery. I think the myth of American Individualism takes a lot of the blame, as does our national disdain for being “soft.” Brute strength is our national pastime. If you don’t believe me check out sales of steroids. Or how many gyms promise to “pump you up!” 

Even though the Christian religion is all about helping the poor there doesn’t seem to be a lot of action in that direction. It confuses me even more than my atheist father did. Christians say they believe in a deity called Jesus who was a poor carpenter. He extolled his followers to give up all they had to follow him. I don’t think he was speaking to just the 12 disciples, I think he was telling everyone that if you want to be a true disciple of his you had to shed the outer skin of wealth.  I don’t need to tell you that’s not the official policy of most churches, right? Instead of spending their wealth on digging wells in Africa or sending food to the Sudan, they build mega churches with comfortable seats, state-of-the-art sound systems replete with golden idols. I doubt Jesus would come in these churches, temples and cathedrals and say, “Yup, this is what I had in mind.” 

Perhaps Americans are already too full of grapes to feel compassion. For true compassion comes from suffering. Not just suffering but the recognition that you are suffering. Then comes the important thought – if it feels shitty to me to suffer it must feel shitty to others to suffer, perhaps I can help them. That aha moment when you realize that suffering and inequity is NOT caused by a single person and his or her deficient boot straps but by circumstances beyond his control. By birthplace, color of skin, size, physical and mental health and mostly by class.  My father was a poor boy who became rich –but NOT by himself. He had help even if he would never admit it.

The irony, again, is that by the society raising my father from poor to rich it helped itself. By going to college and becoming a white collar worker my father repaid that GI Bill many times over by simply paying taxes on a larger income. He helped fuel the bustling 1950’s economy by buying stuff, investing and raising a family who also had a better chance to do the same. It wasn’t even altruism, it was good economics!

Still, I believe FDR was not motivated by anything other than compassion. He was one of the rare rich people who cared that his fellow monkeys only had cucumbers. The fact that he was suffering a debilitating and painful disease may have had something to do with it. He joined the ranks of Siddhartha and Gandhi –also of wealthier families, who shed their wealth to follow the path of love and compassion. 

Irony. It’s coming. Siddhartha was a Buddhist and Gandhi a Hindu. Neither was a Christian and yet they embodied the teachings of Jesus in a way Jimmy Swaggert and his ilk never could or would.

“What in hell does any of this have to do with you, Nancy, and your crazy brain?” you ask if you’re still reading.

I’ll tell you. My crazy brain is either a gift or a curse. It depends on how I use it. I can be bitter and sad (which I am sometimes) or I can see it as a conduit to reach other people. Maybe touch their similar suffering. Ease it a tiny bit by showing them they are not alone. Or deficient. Or to blame. 

We got the short end of the sanity stick. Full stop. How we view it is up to us.

 What we do with it is up to us. Me? I’m gonna talk about it.

And pass the grapes.