Hurt people...

hurt people. That's one of those things people say to make us feel better when we've been wronged or to make us feel better when we're the one doing the wrong. I do believe it tends to be true. Of course, not everyone who has been hurt, hurts and not everyone who hurts us has been hurt. But we've all been hurt and, frankly, we've all done some hurting of others. The second part of that sentence tends to make us uncomfortable, but it's still true. We are all part villain and part victim. I'm the bad guy in other people's story* and maybe you are the antagonist in mine. We've all done and said things that have done harm. I mean, we can't all be the victim all the time, right? Someone has to be doing the hurting. Someone has to be the one giving the hell.

When someone has done something to me that has created a wound, I do (usually) try to understand why. Is it me? Am I the one who caused the initial hurt that's now being reflected back to me? Is this person simply lashing out at me, because I'm the closest or easiest target? Do they feel safe expressing their anger or sadness or hurt with me, because they trust me to understand and forgive? Or are they just plain mean? Usually, it's not mean, it really is a bad seed someone else planted in them and for whatever reason, they are reaping it all over me or you. Or maybe I am the drama.

When I was in fifth grade, we had a new principal. He was a younger man and, in hindsight, I can easily say he was earnest, serious and desperately wanting to be taken seriously. He was a bit more than necessary. I remember distinctly on a warm day at the beginning of the school year he was giving what I truly believe he thought was a profound and inspiring speech to our class. He walked up and down the rows the entire time he was addressing the students of whom he was now in charge. I remember feeling very snoozy and overly warm and bored out of my mind. I was fighting to keep my eyes open and sweating like, well, a kid in an un-airconditioned class room during late summer. My glasses began to slide down my nose. As the principal walked by, he took his middle finger and pushed my glasses up my nose, the tip of his finger ever-so-slightly tapped against my forehead between my eyebrows.

And something inside me exploded in white hot rage.

It was embarrassing, of course. Girls shouldn't sweat (keep in mind it was the early eighties). It's likely only the classmates sitting to my left and my right saw, if they even did. It wasn't the embarrassment as much as the tap of his finger on the spot of skin at the top of my nose. This man touched me. Now let me be clear, it wasn't something nefarious, it was a simple gesture meant, likely, to be helpful and at worst to assert his authority and make sure I was paying attention to his dutiful droning. But to a little girl like me who was terrified of men, who had been touched in terrible ways, who couldn't tell anyone what was hurting, it was a match dropped in gasoline.

I sat in that chair hearing nothing but the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears, the rest of his bloviation lost on me. All I could think about, all I could feel was that hot, angry, shameful spot at the top of my nose. It felt on fire. And that fire began to spread and grow and it started consuming the part of me that could control my reactions to men. It burned through my desperate need to be nice and liked and made me a heat-seeking missile toward men. 

Interesting isn't? I had endured horrible touching and suffered in silence without so much as a tear. I didn't make a sound at that, but this...this fingertip to my forehead caused me to get very loud, very quickly. A few minutes later, our class went to P.E. and that is where 10 year old hurt Lisa, hurt someone. 

Our P.E. teacher was a man. He was actually an incredibly kind and encouraging man. He had a wife and children. He was doing his job and working with kids who were of varying athletic ability and interest. Yet he showed up week after week to teach. And I was there, week after week, putting him through hell. Now, I realize I was a kid, and, because I'm pretty ashamed of that behavior now, perhaps it wasn't as bad for him as I feel it was. But perhaps it was. Maybe, I did hurt him. The incredibly harsh things that came out of my mouth, the attempts to undermine his authority, the blatant disrespect...I feel almost sick thinking about it now. If I were he, I would have hated me, even though I was a kid.

But if he felt that way, he never let me know. He ignored it for the most part, and when he did address it, he didn't yell, he just told me to go sit down and be quiet. Sometimes, he'd send me in to wash my face and calm down. He never sent me to the Principal. He just kept showing up and doing his job. I'd like to think that maybe I wasn't that bad, but I know I was. It's a big regret of mine. I can tell myself that I was a kid who was betrayed and broken, but I still can't excuse my behavior to myself. 

I was a hurt person who hurt a person, right? No. It's not right. It's really, really not. And yes, I was a kid and he was an adult and yada yada, but it's still wrong. Just because you were hurt doesn't make it excusable to hurt someone else. We still have to be held accountable for our actions. We can't excuse it or ignore it or explain it away, because if everyone who is hurt goes around hurting people, then everyone will keep being hurt and keep hurting and the ride won't ever stop. Hurt people who hurt people are still absolutely wrong for doing so. Full stop.

Adults now use that little saying to allow them to perpetrate all sorts of emotional damage on others. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe in triggers...see above with the finger to the glasses, BUT I believe my triggers are my responsibility to address and monitor and regulate. Grown Lisa knows that the fire that was lit by the simple, innocuous touch was about something deep and terrible. It was about ME not him, but it also wasn't about the teacher who bore the brunt of my rage. 

Let me be clear here, kids who have been harmed are not to blame for the way they process and deal with what happened to them, again, full stop. I do believe we have to start teaching personal responsibility and accountability for behavior at some point, so that the hurt doesn't perpetuate hurt. We have to start somewhere, yes? We cannot dismiss transgressions against others simply because we've been transgressed against. (Forgiveness without boundaries is also unhealthy, but that's for another day.) 

We need to start listening to what people aren't saying out loud, but their behavior is screaming. We need to ask what was created in them that is now creating damage to others. We need to help them find and then heal their villain origin story before they become someone else's. As importantly, we need to not allow them to go unchecked. They can't go around causing explosions without so much as a look back. Hurt people don't get to hurt people without repercussions. They can't or everything and everyone will go up in flames.

I've thought about that teacher a lot lately. He didn't know I was hurting. I'm absolutely positive that if he did, he would have helped. He didn't know, because I couldn't say. All I could do was be mean. All I could do was hurt, because I was hurting. But I'm so very sorry. Adult Lisa is so incredibly sorry for what 10 year old Lisa did and said. So, yes, we should try to understand why someone is lashing out, acting out, and hurting others. We need to gently walk back with them until they find that point where someone caused the hurt that creates more hurt and help them put that fire out before it consumes them and those around them. Even when we are burning, we must choose not burn others, because lighting someone else on fire won't put out the flames of our own hell.

*This is a different story for another blog. If you think you know, you probably don't know the truth.