His Mercy is More - Matt Boswell and Boyce College Choir

The Cheese Grates It: The Effects of Bullying Last a Lifetime

A response to a post on "The Mighty."

I'm now almost 54 years old, but the bullying that I endured all through school still affects me to this day.  I have always felt that I was hideously ugly. If I'm completely analytical about my appearance, I'm actually fairly ordinary-looking, but when one lives in a society which has a very narrow view of beauty and constant bullying is added to that, one learns to loathe one's physical appearance. I honestly don't like it when people compliment me on anything because my initial thought is that they are just trying to get something out of me.

When I was in the third grade, I was sexually assaulted by two of my female classmates. I was too ashamed to say anything.  Later, a boy in that same class pinned me up against the wall and told me that he was going to kill me with his pocket knife. I wet my pants, and when I went to the school nurse, she laughed at me and told me that I was being silly. This boy was very popular, and he was never punished.

Throughout school, the bullying that I endured often had sexual overtones. There were horrible rumors that I would have sex with any boy who wanted it. In fact, I was so naive that I thought a "bl*w j*b" was blowing in someone's ear, and I wondered why anyone found that sexy.  Boys would often grab my breasts or buttocks. The adults never did anything about it. In one math class, the teacher was sitting right there while my classmates said things like "she plays with herself" and "she'd play with her t*ts if she had any." Up until I turned 18 and realized that my breasts tended to get in the way when I was doing things, I hated my "flat chest." I actually have rather average-sized breasts, not that anyone should be bullying someone with smaller than average breasts.

I have never enjoyed sex, but once I got into high school, I allowed my boyfriend to take my virginity. He dumped me after that, and I ended up in the mental hospital over the weekend with a slew of unkind doctors and nurses looking down their noses at me. One nurse even told me that I was a freak and I would never be normal. To this day, I'm proud of my sixteen-year-old self who told her: "better a freak than a b*tch like you." I don't know how I found the strength in me, but I stood up to those jerks, and I tried to be helpful to the other patients who were in there with me. My roommate was a woman in her 50's who was so severely anorexic that all her bones were showing. She had trouble voicing her needs, so I tried to be her voice.

Remembering these things makes tears of anger come to my eyes, but they won't last long because the message that crying is weak was so deeply internalized. I have a lot of trouble crying. I didn't cry after the deaths of some of my close relatives. I didn't cry when I had to have my beloved rescue cat put to sleep on his sixth birthday due to kidney failure. It's not that it didn't matter. I've never recovered from it. There's a gaping wound in my heart that will never be filled. I get accused of being cold and uncaring because I don't cry, but I simply can't. Crying was a weakness that my bullies would exploit, so I never let them see me cry.

I have major mental illnesses (type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder which manifests as hoarding objects, not animals.) Any coping skills I have with these diseases have been developed on my own. "Mental health professionals" have only tried to medicate me into normalcy even though I do not respond well to psych meds. They make me manic and psychotic. Family members offer wisdom like "just stop being like that," "just stop thinking like that," "just stop looking for attention," and "just act normal."

I have been completely unsuccessful in life, and, if it weren't for my son, the honest truth is that I would have been long gone. My life has been a series of loss and disappointments. With the psych conditions I have, it would have been an uphill battle anyway, but with the self-loathing I learned from being bullied all through school, the battle became impossible.  

When my diabetes worsened, I became unable to work the difficult jobs and long hours that I had always prided myself on being able to work. I am now living in poverty. If it weren't for my son, I'd be homeless. I do not have hope for things getting better.

Bullying destroys lives, but all I ever heard is that it was my fault that I was bullied, and if I would just "act normal" and "ignore it," I wouldn't "bring it on" myself.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

I Am Grateful

As someone with a rather chaotic life, everything is catch as catch can. I've tried meditating, but I have trouble doing so. This video is brief enough that it allows me to focus fully on it and to help myself with the brief, encouraging, but not sappy affirmations.

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 28: Schism

Copyright Didgeman

Demanding that one

Who has been repeatedly broken

Must make the choice

To appear whole and happy

In order to bridge the chasm

Between rejection and belonging

Only serves to foster

A life built on a lie

The schism remains

And the least misstep

Means falling back into the abyss

~Cie~

Of Fairness, God and The Universe

Recently a person I have known for over fifty years and whose health is not the best complained that it all seemed so unfair. Their lungs failing them, their damaged hip plus my cancer are all somehow judged by them as wrong in the scheme of things, a little too much for one person to have to bear. This implies a greater power, perhaps a deity, that has for reasons unknown selected the pair of us to contract these hideous diseases or afflictions. There is no God or deity who would do such a thing for there is only one power in the universe able to utilise disease as a way to balance life. It may seem cruel if judged by those who believe in a personal deity but when seen it how it is, the universe ensuring the balance of life is maintained then the idea of fairness becomes redundant. All the diseases we as a species face, all the diseases any of creation encounter are there for a purpose and that purpose is to, as I now repeat myself, add balance in the circle of life. In short, those diseases we face are there to kill us. It is only by humankind's benign involvement with their ever-growing knowledge of science applied medicine coupled with their incredible intelligence that holds those diseases at bay. 

Belief in God doesn't mean that the God being believed in has any direct involvement with the pain people suffer as a consequence of a disease being suffered. You cannot pass the blame of pain or of disease onto another even a deity. To do so implies a level of wickedness on the other you are saying is responsible. God is not like that. If there is a God then surely he created nature, the universe and all that lies within it. He is not a wicked deity but neither is the universe or nature itself. Blaming another for the state you are in is just a call for help. Aside from friends and family, neighbours maybe, there is no one else to help you. Only you can help you. The fault doesn't exist. There is no fault. What is ailing you is beyond blame. As harsh as it sounds you simply have to get on with it. My cancer is not the fault of anyone. Cancer is part and parcel of life. It just is, Life just is.

The Cheese Grates A Tale: When the Driver Met the Douche-Lord: A Tale of Entitled Customers

Last night I had to run an order over to Entitlement Palace, a nightmare high-rise known for its bad-tempered valets and stuck-up, entitled, rich-bitch customers.

The service I work for delivers food curbside, not to the door. This is made clear a couple of times in the app: once at the beginning of the process, and when the order is placed. After the order is placed, a message appears which says “delivery is on us, but it is your responsibility to meet your driver at the curb.”

Offering curbside service means that the driver does not have to find a place to park in a city which is notorious for having little in the way of available parking. The driver pulls up as close to the customer’s address as possible and puts on the hazard lights. If all goes smoothly, the customer is either waiting there or comes out quickly after the driver hits the “arrived at customer” command on their app, which alerts the customer to the driver’s presence in their app.

I’ve had customers who somehow failed to realize that they were supposed to come out before (or were hoping that we’d make an exception for them because they’re soooo special), but none of them ever acted like the absolute tosser that I encountered last night. At worst the huffed a little, took their food, and were on their way.

There are occasions where the driver will make an exception. On one such occasion, the customer was a clerk in a liquor store who had a broken leg and was confined to a wheelchair. There was a convenient parking lot, and he was nice, even tipped cash.

On another occasion, a security guard couldn’t leave her post. But there was a nice, convenient loading area in front of the building, and she was right inside at the front desk. Again, she was pleasant and apologized for any inconvenience.

Not so Lord Cantankerous Wankerous.

His Douchiness put “lobby” in the special instructions area on the app. My thought as I drove off? “Not happening, Bitch.” Customer service contacted him sometime during the process. I pulled up to the curb as I always do, dreading the inevitable unpleasant interaction with the miserable valet. The valet told me I’d have to move across the drive, which I did, and sat waiting for His Douchiness to grace me with his presence.

When the seven minutes were almost up, I attempted to call the illustrious Lord of Douchebag Manor. The line was still ringing when I got a text from customer service, asking if the customer was picking up. I replied “no,” and in that moment, Lord Wankerous deigned to appear.

“I said lobby!” he snapped, shaking his finger at me.

“Service is curbside, Sir,” I said calmly.

He huffed away. I sent a text to customer service which read ‘he was a dick. He left without taking his food, and I’m not going to chase after him.’ I then marked the order “undeliverable” and went back to the kitchen.

In the meantime, the kitchen remade the order and was going to send one of the bicycle couriers with it. However, Lord Wankerous complained to customer service that I should be fired for my insolence towards him. They said that wasn’t going to happen. At that point, the assistant manager in the kitchen decided he’d had enough and told customer service that he wanted them to 86 Lord Wankerous.

Thus, the bicycle courier and I both got free meals, and Lord Wankerous can no longer order from us.

The moral of this story: 

Don’t act like an entitled bitch. Just because you live in an overpriced high rise with miserable valets doing your bidding (they’re probably miserable because they’re treated like trash) doesn’t make you superior to the peasants who make your life easier, your Royal Douchiness.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

My Musings through life: The Fading Breathe

My Musings through life: The Fading Breathe: Day-26 OctPoWriMo-2018 Prompt: Inside Out (Form: Sonnet) Image: Sneha Faking, the plethora of emotions, The dirge of thoughts...



I have had days like this. After my father died, there was much left unsaid and much that couldn't be said. He had vascular dementia at the time of his death so there would have been no sense saying certain things. However, before his dementia developed, he wouldn't have listened. He always had to have the last word.

Similarly, I'd like to clear the air with my mother, but she won't listen. She'll jump to the defensive straightaway. When she passes, I will have the same remorse and everything will remain unsaid.