Yet Another Suicide

Another young person has taken his life.

It's a tragedy.  I'm sorry for his family's loss.  My heart aches for them and I'm so sorry they have to pick up the pieces.  I'm sorry for the friends who will miss him and I'm sorry for all the things he'll never get to do, share, and be.  I'm sorry the world lost someone who had only begun to live.  It's a tragedy.

However...

When did the societal focus shift from teaching coping skills and asking for help to blaming society for not being appropriately warm and welcoming?  I remember a rash of suicides and attempted suicides when I was in high school.  The administration of my school took it very seriously and we had several assemblies and break-out counseling sessions to address suicide.  A decade or two ago, there wasn't a single discussion about blaming bullies, but rather how to cope with the difficulties in your own life and how to watch for the signs that alert you to an attempted suicide.  

When we did lay down the mantle of being responsible for ourselves and begin expecting the world to be nice to us?  Bullies have been around since the beginning of time.  Hey, it's not a coincidence that when someone's acting like an ass we call him a "caveman."  We aren't going to eradicate asinine behavior.  We aren't ever going to rid the world of jerks.

The only ones we can change are ourselves.  No one is ever the single Alpha all the time.  Someone who is a bully has been bullied.  Unless we're talking about lobotomizing society, it isn't going away.  Ever.

The only one who can change how things are perceived is the one who perceives them.  Why are we not focusing on how to cope with being bullied instead of blaming the bullies?  Why are we not focusing on teaching better coping skills (the world isn't going to be nice to you, so figure out how to make it work)?

And, by the way, when did "we" decide the only suicides that are newsworthy are those committed by homosexuals?  

~ G

"Bullycide"

There's now a name combining two things that have been around from the beginning of mankind: bullying and suicide.  "Bullycide."  The term wasn't coined by a doctor or a scientist.  Nope, a journalist came up with the name.  "Bullycide."  It's the new "-gate."  Just add "-cide" to something to make your theory valid.


Here's the thing that rankles me: Since the beginning of mankind there have been bullies.  And there have been suicides.  Terrible, but true.  No one - and I mean no one - can make you kill yourself.  No one.  They can make your life a living hell, but they cannot make you kill yourself.  They can literally kill you, but they cannot make you kill yourself.  Frankly, calling it "bullycide" is the coward's way out.


Yes, we have more technology than cavemen.  They wrote on walls.  We sext.  But the truth is (as someone who was both the bullied and the bully), when you're humiliated, it doesn't matter if it's 2 people or 2 million people who witness it.  It feels like the whole world. The emotion is universal and the emotion is timeless.  There is nothing new about the emotion of humiliation.


Calling it "bullycide" takes all the blame off everyone involved and lays it squarely at the feet of the bullies.  Yes, bullying is despicable, but do bullies deserve the entire blame for a suicide?  Chances are good that if someone's gone to the extreme length to kill themselves, there's more going on than just bullying.  Where are the parents?  What's going on at home?  Where are the teachers?  The school counselors?  The friends? The relatives?  The bullied one has a whole story that only partially includes the bullies.  


Taking the blame from those who should have known something was amiss is part and parcel of where we're going wrong as a country.  No one is responsible anymore.  No one bears their own burdens anymore.  It's someone else's fault.  It had nothing to do with me.  I couldn't stop it.  I'm weak.  I'm a victim.  Someone save me and fix it for me.  "Bullycide" is emblematic of what's happening to our country.  


Extreme?  Probably.  But does it strike at some truth?  Probably.


~ G