Verbal Abuse

     Recently, I heard myself to say that verbal abuse, and sexual abuse are not the same.  I abhor little.  Yet, abuse of any form, I abhor--tremble away from.  I cannot speak to sexual abuse from first-hand experience.  I know one, maybe two individuals whose lives have been touched--violently touched--by sexual abuse.  Hostility, and submissiveness, respectively, make it difficult for me to address with compassion my friends' experiences.
   Hostility, and submissiveness are common responses to sexual abuse.  Yet, I do not feel I may address the issue with the respect it deserves.
   For those reasons, I direct my ponderings to what I do understand from life experience.  Bullying.  Verbal abuse.
   I do not feel the piercing sting--the deep pain--inflicted by Palsy Patty, and the mimicking of my bent right arm in my face during my childhood.  It was not everyone--each of my peers, or every day of my life.  Yet, I never knew the moment, when the bullying would attack.
    My only response was to identify the words I could speak--the explanations I could give--that would make other kids understand why I looked different.
    I do not understand.  Contrary to each and every belief of everyone I knew, I knew that all I needed to be given were the words--the explanations--that would make people understand.  I knew that I could create the understanding that did not exist--in which kids and parents were not willing to engage.
    Compounding the verbal abuse---the lack of understanding--of my peers was the attitude--the belief--of adults that bullying--verbal abuse--was nothing more than a phase kids go through.  No credence was given to the notion that the self-esteem of the kid being teased was not a phase that would be outgrown.  No credence was given to the notion that the nurturing of positive self-esteem was essential--the positive self-esteem of kids who were being teased.  I understood.  Yet, far deeper than the physical disability I had, I was disabled from enlisting the support of my parents, the parents in my neighborhood, the authority figures--principals, most teachers, and counselors--people who I thought were supposed to know better.
     I do not understand quite where my conviction came from--my belief that I could nurture understanding, if only some one of these adults would give me simple, logical, reasonable, understandable words, and explanations.  Nascent faith, perhaps?  I do not know. All I do know, is that in eight grade, I made a commitment to myself--I did not have a sense of God, or that might be what I might call it--to dedicate myself to work toward nurturing the understanding that I did not experience.  It took me years to understand--to identify--what  form my missionary work might take.  Writing?  That seemed the most likely to me, yet, I had no notion of what my outlet would be.  My self-confidence--my introversion--did not lend itself to speaking, or assuming any leadership positions.
    1978.  College.  A staff member asked if I was interested in serving on a campus-wide "Handicap Awareness Committee."  Bingo.  While people close to me did not understand my involvement, my dedication that precluded the studying I should have been doing, I knew better.  I knew that if there was any hope of my making any meaningful contribution to society, I needed to work through the issues
    Pervasive though my paralyzing fear was--fear that others would criticize me, and my actions--I assumed leadership of the Handicap Awareness Committee.  I was driven by the knowledge that I was pursuing my missionary work.  No trips to  Central America for me.  My missionary work was right at home.
     My missionary work was being carried  out.  I spoke to education students at a college in South Dakota.  I nurtured understanding in future teachers of the necessity of nurturing understanding, and building self-esteem.  I shared the transcript of the speech I gave with parents in my neighborhood.  I took the necessary risk of building understanding--of communicating to them what I had not been able to do twenty years earlier.
    Palsy Patty died.  No longer would she have negative, hurtful power over me.  I do call upon her when communicating understanding, and compassion are my call to do.
     "There goes another gimp," spoken by a coworker, who must have seen someone behind me with a walking disability, called the spirit of Palsy Patty to me in an instant.  Gimp is not a word I use to describe myself.  Gimp is not a word worthy of my speaking--reflective of the respect of other individuals I am called to express--to or in regard to any other human being.
     Verbal abuse is not the same as sexual abuse.  Yet, they do share an untenable violation of the human spirit.
     Verbal abuse.  Hostility.  Anger.  Submissiveness.  Others may choose to respond in such spirit.  I cannot respond in such a spirit. [In the heat of political debate, and hyperbole, name-calling of the individuals with opposite convictions is unthinkable.  Yet, far too often, that seems the norm.] It is not a matter of whether I will not respond so.  My will is not in question.
     Verbal abuse.  For a lifetime, I have been called to nurture understanding, build self-esteem, and most importantly separate actions from the individuals responsible for their commission.  Verbal abuse--name calling.  Physical proximity has no part in the commission of verbal abuse.  I abhor the infliction of any derogatory word on the basis of different beliefs, or actions.
    When I asked my father why the kids were teasing me, he said, with deep love, "There is nothing you did wrong, it is something wrong with them."    Emotionally, I did not question his love.  Yet, I could not reconcile how something could be wrong with the kids teasing me.  Young as I was, that seemed an untenable response.  An eye for an eye?
     Verbal abuse.  Bullying.
     Thank God, bullying is finally getting its due in the United States.  It has taken us until suicides rooted in sexual orientation-based situations for society to take bullying seriously.  Suicides are the sad impetus to take seriously a grievous violation of the gifts of being human.
     Verbal abuse.  Bullying.
     Whatever the subject may be, whoever the object may be, I cannot so engage.  Such is my missionary work.  I do so act.  With Compassion.  With Joy.  With Resolution.
     Verbal abuse.  Bullying.
     How do you respond?  Do you erect physical boundaries?  Or, is defamation limited to those human beings within your earshot?