This week I put up a rather simple post. It said what needed to be said and was a check in with people who were concerned. It said:

Yes, I am well aware of the comments elsewhere essentially fat shaming me. If people wish to fat shame me based upon a photo taken in year 10 of a breast cancer drug called Tamoxifen, that’s on them. I can’t control people who wish to shame breast cancer survivors.

If they wish to literally make sheit up about me which is utterly false that is also pathetic and yes, real threats are actionable and documented.

Oh the irony however when someone who is purportedly in the business of offering mental health support who is married to someone who is in the business of caring for women specifically decides to gaslight a woman for personal gain.

That statement was the truth, and my truth. It really got me thinking. Not about me per se, but the whole body shaming, woman shaming of it all.

I was never the skinny kid with seemingly endless legs. That was always my sister who is quite frankly, a knock out. And I don’t envy her that, it comes with it’s own set of obnoxious some days, usually in the form of men who need manners and women who are just simply put jealous of another woman.

I was always the more ordinary one. Have people said I was beautiful or pretty? Yes, but I never really saw that in myself, I just saw me. At the time I was growing up, especially when at Shipley in my era, I was a regular girl with a vowel on the end of my name with brown hair in a sea of fair skinned, fair eyed, fair haired, blue eyed WASPs for the most part.

I was actually truly O.K. with that. I fit in without being a cookie cutter junior Stepford in training of everyone else. I think that has changed today. Today it is like you can and will be punished for being an individual, and it’s worse if you are independent minded. People seem to fear what is not their immediate image in the mirror. You are supposed to be Stepford even on social media, or should I say especially on social media.

I used to think it was kids who could be the most cruel. As an adult I have come to realize that it is in fact the adults who are the most cruel, and that is where the kids first learn it from. One of my readers said to me the other day “Life is a helluva lot easier when we focus on the positive instead of burdening ourselves with the negative.” He is correct. BUT I don’t think we can always gloss over the negative, I think we have to let it out into the sunlight to set it free and not allow it to possess us and darken our joy.

I have been talking about bullying in schools occasionally over the past few years. I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday with kids still in the middle school/high school years. What blew me away is how bad some of the bullying is, and it’s not just the kids. It’s also parents essentially bullying other parents. or adult on adult bullying in general.

So whenever someone says they are surprised by bullying in schools, I always respond why because all we have to do is look to see what the adults are doing.

There is a pack mentality that exists on social media. And usually it occurs on things not particularly important in larger scheme of life. Someone puts up a post gaslighting another person, including myself. In one case it was someone who has self-identified as a public figure and seems to fashion themselves a social media influencer. Usually these are people without obvious star power, or at least discernable personalities in real life, but not all of the time.

I have been a target so often, I lose count. My crimes? Having opinions and not being like the rest of the pack. Oh and not caring to know every single person on Facebook. It’s actually kind of boring. Just like the people who project their behavior onto me, especially those who seem shocked I might stand up for myself while not being untruthful.

This past week was a fascinating sociological and psychological study. Complete pack mentality like rabid dogs. People I chose not to interact with like a woman from high school years, whom I didn’t remember and met again coming out here from the Main Line. Three husbands (or maybe it’s two?) later she is a joke of a human being. She sniffs around anything having to do with me and it’s kind of funny. It was not hard to let her go. She was fun as a friend again for a while, until she wasn’t, so then it was quietly over on my part. Hope she is enjoying all those single events she attends. She’s a good Christian who would stab you in the back without blinking.

Then there are the various and sundry women younger and older than I who probably mistrust me solely because I didn’t go to high school with them, or don’t live in their development, or share their Stepford like political views whatever they may be. I also never sold Slipada or Lu La Roe or protein whatever drinks, and don’t regularly shop QVC. These are the women who are obsessed with everything that isn’t them, that they can’t put into a neat little box. They also don’t like it if you don’t care that they spend their days living the Middle School lunch table life.

Then there are the people who pile on who I have quietly helped in real life. And to what end do they participate? To fit in? How sad. It must be sad to be them.

There are also men mixed in with this. That is always truly fascinating. They want to mansplain or bully and why? Why does one woman they don’t know matter so much?

These people love to gossip. And it’s malicious. And not just to me. But bless their hearts, they are going to do and say whatever. Of course whatever THEY say is fine, it’s everyone else not in their amoeba pack that is the problem. C’est la vie.

I am wishing all of these people a Happy Valentine’s Day slightly sarcastically and bless their heartish. I am wishing my readers and those whom actually know me a genuine Happy Valentine’s Day.

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