A
story has come out about a bus monitor in New York who was bullied by middle school children while she was working. They relentlessly teased her about being overweight, "calling her fat and at one point suggesting that her children commit suicide." When I heard about this story, my heart just broke for this woman. Sometimes children just don't have a filter (as well as some clueless adults), but to treat another human being like that is not only disrespectful, but just downright deplorable. I couldn't watch the actual video they took of the incident, but I knew from the clips I saw on the news that she was taking the teasing because she just didn't want to make it worse and probably wanted to have it end as soon as possible. It brought back painful memories for me.
I have always been overweight, never had those "thin" years and I, too, was relentlessly teased at different points in my life. Her bus ride brought back an incident that I had on a bus when I was in middle school. For a solid week, a girl-bully would tease me on the bus ride to school. She would get in the seat behind me and say just awful things to me about how fat she thought I was, how much of a loser I was, how she said I smelled and all kinds of other awful things to make me feel as big as an ant. She got off on it and made sure other kids around me would hear her taunting. Nobody stopped her and I was afraid to do so because she got in fights with people all the time. Yet, every single day, she was on me. Finally, that Friday, I calmly got up, turned around in my seat ... and punched her face with all the might I had in my arm. Boom! She hit the floor, was bleeding and in pure agony. The force in my arm was not just for her, but for every other time I had been teased and made fun of, as if I wasn't worthy of being a human being and that it was okay to treat me like that. Then, I turned around and sat back down, like nothing had ever happened. I got in serious trouble, but I didn't even care. The pain she caused me inside was like something I could never describe, but I think people reading this probably understand.
It pains me that people in society think it's okay to hurt someone because they are not the same size and shape as they are. We all have things that bring us to becoming overweight and it's not a simple put-down-the-fork-and-push-away-from-the-table solution. Oh, how I wish it was! I ache for the woman in this story and the indignity she suffered at the hands of bullies, even if they were children. This is another reminder that losing weight is not an easy feat. There are emotional issues behind carrying extra weight and, often times, a lot of pain. Yet, I know, I must work through that pain and any issues that come up so that I don't have to live in a body that keeps me in an unhealthy space any longer.
