A Thank You To Those Who Make This Tiny Slice of Life Worth Sharing Online

The fact that Alexis recently spent ten minutes trying to convince me that she should be home-schooled speaks volumes about how the school year is going at the moment.

It has been a rough couple of weeks.

There's sort of a theme that has been woven through the days and that theme is "Kids are Forgetting to Think." Bad decisions are happening all over the place. I'm convinced the extra-long winter and prolific cancellations have kids frustrated now that they realize there's a LOT left in the school year, but that doesn't excuse some of what has happened. Some of it is just a singular bad decision; some of it is part of a pattern of behavior.

Some of it is exactly what the school's bullying program claims to address.

Maybe I'm the only one, but it seems from where I'm sitting that bullying programs have two major flaws: 1) The definition of "bullying" seems to be all sorts of jacked up. It's the most over-used word in grade schools, but not everyone agrees on what qualifies. For example, a single bad decision doesn't qualify in my head, but whatever. The bigger problem is 2) the "how to respond to bullying" thing is entirely too dependent on telling an adult.

Alexis for certain is conflicted about that "telling an adult" thing. She doesn't want people to get in trouble, but it seems to be the only coping skill school endorses.

She needs to know how to respond when people repeatedly use words or actions to hurt her.

When she learns how to respond, she needs to teach me. Seriously. I still don't know how to respond when people use words to purposely hurt me.

There's this thing that happens when you're a blogger for any extensive amount of time -- people forget that you're a human being doing your best to live a life. You become a character that sometimes people feel deserves criticism. Sometimes they do it through passive-aggressive tweets for months on end, but sometimes they take a more direct route and go to gossip websites and spend lots of time ripping the blogger to shreds with their words.

I'm not going to link to the conversation I've seen a few times because I keep the readers of this space on a crazy high pedestal. I think of you all as some of the most amazing people I've never met. You continuously make the world a better place through Christmas Crazy and other charitable endeavors. You send me emails that sometimes make me cry because of your humanity and generosity. You often blow me away with the ways that you take a word or two from here and turn it into something truly amazing elsewhere.

I have to believe you all are way above web sites built on cutting people down. I don't want to see any sort of evidence that maybe some of you aren't.

But there are definitely at least two people who read this site who aren't at all above it. In fact, those people aren't above extending their criticisms and hurtful words to Alexis. When you make the decision to write cutting words about an 8-year old in a public place where that 8-year old could very well find them, I can't figure out what to do other than shake my head.

I just don't get it.

There are only 24 hours in a day and you are going to spend some of those hours reading words that you know you will find annoying and then spend even more of those hours complaining about those annoying words? There's a very simple solution to the whole thing, and that's to go find a blog that you do relate to and that you genuinely enjoy to read instead of this one, but you'd rather wallow in a vat of misery and then publicly insult a child?

It makes no sense.

I don't need to return the favor and insult those people, though. I may not know how to deal with bullying, but I do know stooping to that level isn't a solution.

What I do know is that the whole thing has made me realize something -- I have an awful lot of power over some people's lives. I write something here and they become so wrapped up in it that they go places and talk about it, analyzing the words, making assumptions about my character, and labeling me in ways that are sometimes just plain hilarious in their wrongness. I don't care that they think all of those things, but it's very interesting that they care so much about me. Hours and hours have been spent wallowing in a vat of misery. I triggered it with a few words in my tiny corner of the internet.

Yet.

While there are those hurtful words floating publicly on the internet, there are also words floating around my inbox, Facebook messages, and tweets. There are words from those people I have on that pedestal that convey thoughts that humble me, help me feel not so alone when I'm struggling with life, and that remind me that we all have things we are trying to overcome. Sometimes those words say that I've done something to help another person, but the reality is the readers of this site more frequently help me.

So thank you for that. It is really, truly appreciated every single day.

(I'm closing comments on this post because I'm not looking for "head pats" or warm fuzzies from the comments. I just needed to get my words out of my head.)

(Though, if you do have a good strategy for dealing with bullies that either myself or Alexis could use, maybe email it to me? I am completely serious when I say we could use better tools for those situations.)