Verbal Abuse Comes In Many Forms
Aug 28 '09
The Bottom Line Think before you speak!
The following is a response I had originally posted in a thread re: verbal abuse...
I believe that--at one time or another--we have all received verbal abuse.
Not only that, but we have also been guilty of GIVING it!
This is one of our shortcomings: To say hurtful things to another person at times, even though we aren't what would be known as hurtful people.
We need to remember that words are like toothpaste squeezed from a tube that can't be pushed back in.
They are also like nails being driven into a board. Even when the nails are removed, the holes are left behind so that the board will never be the same again.
I once read somewhere that the words we say--kind or unkind--go out into the universe and keep floating around, either enhancing or polluting it.
I've, on more than one occasion, been into a debate before re: being honest in communication. My personal take on this is that one can be totally-honest (in most situations anyway) without resorting to being brutally honest, but not everybody agrees with this. I still hold my ground on this one.
There are, imo, certain occasions where a kind of verbal abuse goes on that is totally uncalled for.
One of them is the kind of bullying spousal/child/relative/etc. situation where somebody is constantly browbeaten by another person, either to keep them in line for the one doing the browbeating or else to satisfy some kind of sadistic need in the same.
One example of this is where a child in a large family becomes the whipping boy/whipping girl for everybody else. There was a movie like this--though I can't think of the name of it--where the child in the middle (a girl) is always getting scolded (and, on occasion, hit) by her mother (the dad is mostly passive) while the youngest child (another girl) looks like a tiny ballerina and can get away with everything and the oldest child (a boy) is respected because of his intelligence and musical ability even though, like his whipping girl sister, he wasn't blessed with what is perceived by society as traditional good looks.
Another example is spousal (and can happen to either a man or woman) that was sung about by Roy Clark in his song, Thank God And Greyhound You're Gone! where the wife, before she left, put the husband down so much that he began to feel as if he were only one inch tall. There's another song along those lines (I can't remember who did it) called She Let Herself Go about a woman whose verbally-abusive spouse had finally left her, and she let herself go--but not as in going downhill but, instead, as in going to do the things that she never got to do while she was married because her husband didn't think she was worth his time. Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive is another example of a verbally-abused person like this becoming empowered and proving she can go on without her significant other. However, not all people feel that empowered after being run through the ringer by a verbally-abusive other person!
Finally, there's the example that's not really intentional (most of the time) where a child receives a negative label in school (e.g. lazy, dumb) from a teacher, and, even if it weren't actually true, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I believe that there are at least three reasons why Susan Boyle is so loved and famous today.
One reason, of course, is that she was one of those very fortunate people to be "discovered" who have a lot to give in the way of talent. This has happened time and time again to such people as The Beatles, Elvis, The Four Seasons--people who have no influential family members/friends who have some sort of special influence but they still manage to become well-known. Susan Boyle was in the right place at the right time!
Another thing is her winning personality! How could you not love this sweet-faced woman with the sparkling eyes, mischievous grin, spunk, and a delightful sense-of-humor. If she couldn't sing, of course, she still couldn't make it as a singer, but she can sing (an understatement) and you like her so well because she's so sweet that you want her to succeed because she deserves to!
But there's yet another reason. This is a woman who has put up with verbal-abuse in great measure from the time that she was a child. This abuse didn't come from her loving family, but it came from her peers who taunted her and called her Susie Simple because of her learning disabilities. Although I personally find her to be a very attractive woman, she doesn't have those traditional Hollywood good looks, and her hair can be hard to manage.
Over the years, she focused on other things besides her looks and had--without even realizing it--allowed herself to get to looking a little frumpy.
Therefore, when she went on stage for the first time at Great Britain's Got Talent, everybody thought of her as a kind of court jester good for some laughs when she opened her mouth to sing (as she would, likely, sound something like Edith Bunker), and this audience would get its sick jollies by laughing at her and booing her off the stage.
She ended up leaving the audience cheering for her--and she also left them in tears. Those tears, I believe, weren't just due to the beauty of her voice and the moving words of her song, but were also tears of repentance for those sinful thoughts they had of making fun of her for their own sick pleasure. For those who didn't have such thoughts but knew that others did, they were tears of joy that Susan Boyle had "shown them" bigtime!
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Member: Ainsley Jo Phillips
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