Bullies

How do you respond to bullies? What in your life has influenced your reactions? Is it still bullying when adults deliberately set out to make each other feel like crap? Or does it have a new definition? Real life perhaps.

I hate to say this, as I'm a grown woman, but I've been encountering behaviour recently that makes me feel bullied. It is very similar to behaviour I encountered at school; people calling me names, accusing me of things I didn't say or do and apparently deliberately attacking my choices and words. This bullying behaviour even extends to my family. One of these people suggested to my husband that his mother was lazy, which is why he didn't do better at school.

I'm an HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, and all my life I have had difficulty in moderating my response to people like this. I become deeply upset, I lash out. I was regularly accused of being a "drama queen" at school because of this, apparently I was supposed to either ignore the bullies or give as good as I got. But an HSP can't always do this. HSPs feel things more keenly than others and are easily overwhelmed. I become overwhelmed and extremely emotional when people are overtly critical or abusive towards me.

For a while at school I did actually get it under control. I learned how to not storm away from a situation in an effort to protect myself and to sit still and take it for as long as I had to before I was free to walk calmly and quietly to a private place. And then I would release my feelings. I was afraid that if people saw how upset I was that the bullying would be worse.

That period was very black for me. I became very depressed and drifted away from many friends, I found it very difficult to trust people and open up to them for a long time. These days, I don't do much better, my behaviour is more moderate for the most part, but I can and do still react strongly to being cornered and because I couldn't lash out when I was younger I over compensate now!

I'm not hiding behind these events, not at all, I'm using my experiences to illustrate the point that because of my nature, bullying did not do anything positive for me, as others argue it should have done.

Apparently, it should have toughened me up, I should be over it and be capable of dealing with obstructive people now as a grown woman. My point is that actually, being bullied crippled me emotionally and did not prepare me for "real life". I don't have a thicker skin and I don't really feel better equipped to deal with these people as adults.

I am pretty good at standing up for myself now, but not because of bullies, it's because of surrounding myself with people who care about me and who care about the same things that I do. I have drawn strength from other people, just enough to stand on my own on some issues, but not personal attacks against me.

I'm not afraid to state my opinion now, I was quite a doormouse for a few years! Now I'm not afraid to be honest about what music I like, or books I read. I'm not embarrassed by my tastes, I don't care if people judge me for those things as ultimately they are all a matter of personal taste and don't matter that much to me.

I regularly get myself on the radio and in the papers, saying what I think of maternity services and what should be done to improve them. I have been on demonstrations and been openly critical of the government because I believe passionately that we have to speak out about these things if we are to make positive changes. But these things are a step removed from me and I'm not likely to be directly confronted by anyone unprofessional enough to make a mockery of me or my views.

Where I stumble is when, like recently, a few individuals come at me relentlessly with misguided and antagonistic vitriol about me, my parenting choices, my lifestyle choices and my family. But I do want to do better, I want to be able to just walk away from them, ignore them, not get into pointless internet debates with ignorant people. I still have some growing to do!

Grounded In Fantasy

So, this week saw the release of the final part in the Harry Potter film franchise. I went to see the first possible screening, at midnight! It was no disappointment. In fact it was breathtakingly good. But this isn't a review of the film, nor is it a critique of the whole series, I want to talk about the fantasy genre and what it is really all about.

There seems to be a mass misconception among those who have never taken the time to familiarise themselves with the genre, an understandable misconception that fantasy takes readers or viewers away from the real world. I read a comment in relation to Harry Potter recently, stating that the author was too grounded in reality to enjoy fantasy.

I've read a lot of fantasy and my better half has read far more than I have, our bookshelves are a testament to a lifelong love affair with swords and sorcery, wizards and goblins, mystical lands and generational wars.

But what does really good fantasy actually do? No matter where or when it is set, good fantasy makes you think about your own life and our own world.

The magic and mystical beings are handy writing conventions that give the author a sort of mirror in which they reflect back to the reader insights into the human condition.

Take Harry Potter, yes, there are wizards and witches, magic wands, dragons and an evil wizard out to seize power over mere "muggles", causing an epic war among the denizens of the magical world. It is an epic story. Or is it?

The main character is an ordinary boy. He's not an especially gifted wizard. He feels out of his depth a lot of the time, he forms an immediate rivalry with another boy at school, he struggles to turn in his homework on time and from time to time he gets into quite serious trouble. That is why his story has captured the imaginations of so many people, of all ages, because most people can relate to him.

As for the evil enemy and the epic war, I think most free thinking adults can see the allegory in that basic storyline; the power-hungry who abuse their position and oppress people. It has happened throughout the world in various guises and I dare say it will continue to do so for a long time to come.

As it happens, Voldemort and Harry are intimately linked because of events in their shared history, so Harry fears that he could turn out to be just like his evil enemy. So into the mixing pot of real life reflections is the concept of duality and inner demons, of a person having to overcome their fears, conquer their demons and allow their positive traits to triumph. Most of us do this in our lives, most of us try to better ourselves and doubt ourselves along the way, most of us have things about ourselves that we fear or dislike, we can try to acknowledge our faults and strive to overcome them, or otherwise accept them as a part of ourselves.

All of the issues underneath the fantasy setting are true to life and they are the elements that the story is really about. The existence of magic is just the dressing, just the tool with which to tell a very personal and real world story.

This is far from unique to Harry Potter, as I said at the beginning, all good fantasy does this. That's not to say that there isn't an awful lot of very bad fantasy out there though! And it's true of horror and science fiction too.

Take the Southern Vampire Mysteries series (True Blood), on the surface it's about Vampires and shape shifters, but really it's about relationships and about owning oneself and all ones talents and flaws.

Babylon 5 is a great example of sci-fi that is really all about the people. Yes there are aliens and advanced technology, but it's about what people do when faced with a difficult decision, it's about the way society bends to whoever is in power and what happens to the people who see through the propaganda to what is really happening.

The series, A Song of Ice and Fire, by George RR Martin, recently televised in the series Game of Thrones, spans a huge fantasy world with different cultures and an epic power struggle between families. It's a political drama, essentially, and its characters are the heart and soul of the story.

The plethora of teen supernatural romance series out there explore coming of age, learning to be independent and making ones own decisions in life and let's not forget, the intoxication of first love.

Fantasy doesn't get more gritty and relate-able.

Placing a real world condition or dilemma in a fantasy setting allows authors to explore the issues with more vigour and honesty than placing it in the real world often does. It can free authors from fear of offending sensitive groups and it can allow them access to groups of people who wouldn't otherwise ponder the issues consciously.

Fantasy definitely has its place and while it isn't going to appeal to everyone, I do think people shouldn't knock it until they've tried it.