“But this is the most intimate way
I can interact with him; the accumulation of past experience motivates me to
stay away from him in particular, as well as away from general family events”
(Keith Berry and Tony E. Adams)
The
quote I chose for this blog comes from a personal story of a man who was
bullied by their older cousin because he was a “faggot”. While I am sure that
everyone can recall one story during their life time where they were bullied,
this one in particular is one that I can really relate to. Being raised in a
huge family, I had many older cousins that had always picked on me for multiple
reasons. However, being fat was the only one that really stuck with me. Fat boy
and fat ass were the typical ones that I heard every time I came around these
cousins. While I was definitely over-weight for my age growing up, I became
very self-conscious about the way I looked. I hated going anywhere that I had
to take my shirt off, and being raised in Sunny San Diego where the beach is
right down the street, I missed out on a lot of fun family and friend events because
I hated the way my body looked. For the family events that I did attend, it
seemed like it was a cultural norm for my cousins to call me fat while my
parents and elders just watch us “playing” with each other. Now that I have
gotten older, these insults do not get under my skin as much anymore, however
it is something that comes to my head whenever I see one of my little cousins
being messed with. When I see this now, I do my best to talk to my little
cousins about why people do the things they do and hope that they do not have
to go through the same things I did. With this, I have added a link about a man
talking about his troubles through his childhood due to bullying.
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