Bullying has a half-life

Something bad happened recently. A joke misfired and caused me to have a panic attack, in a very inconvenient time and place, in front of people, without access to my usual coping mechanisms. It was probably in the top five most humiliating experiences of my adult life. The person who did it immediately apologized, but the damage was done. I was a sweaty, shaky mess, everyone was looking at me, and I was generally jumpy for the next 48 hours.

But here's the cool part: I could tell that the person who did it didn't mean it. It was completely obvious. I could tell that objectively speaking the intended joke was well within the range of what I can normally dish out and take, and they'd just misestimated the impact of my phobias. So there were no hard feelings and the next time I saw them (after I'd regained my equilibrium) we were back to normal.

This is significant because my bullies would often trigger panic attacks, and then in front of the grownups would go through the motions of apologizing and/or saying "What? It was only a joke!" One of the long-term effects of having been bullied is that I'm distrustful and defensive. I tend to assume people's intentions are malicious because for so long even the most innocent of questions that in the real world are perfectly valid ways of making conversation had malicious intent behind them. But that didn't happen this time. It simply wasn't there.

Often when people tell stories like this, their thesis is "Look at me, I've chosen to forgive and move on, I'm so fucking zen and transcendent!" That's not what I'm saying here at all. The reason this is significant is I didn't choose this reaction. There was no "Well, you have to look at it from the other person's point of view," there was no "I want to be a better person than that." It just happened. I was still shaking and holding back tears and jumpy enough to snap at anyone who talked to me, but could I see that it was intended as a joke, the joke was objectively innocent, and the apology was sincere. That was my first and only interpretation of the situation, and the precedent set by my bullies didn't come into play at all.

The bullies weren't inside me. Even in a moment of weakness, they were completely irrelevant.

It never occurred to me that this could ever happen. It has never happened before. But this probably means it can happen again. I doubt they'll ever be completely gone, but maybe one day I'll be able to go days and weeks and months without ever feeling the bullies.

If this is what it means to get older, bring it on!