Taking Up For Yourself

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. 

– Winston Churchill

I was walking back from the cafeteria to my locker. I had just ate, was feeling good, motivated, had my actual real-live girlfriend beside me, and felt like I was somewhat on the right path. I was young, had a ton of energy, and had youthful innocence that was validated by my age as well as my auburn hair, light reddish skin, and blue eyes. Ahhhh – the good ole’ days of high school. Little did I know I was naive for what was about to come.

The kids who usually bullied me were waiting for me to cross the empty area outside besides the soda machines. They did not care that my girlfriend was with me, or about decency or moral values. They were a true testament to the face that there is an inherently indescribingly cruel nature to human beings that only wants to inflict pain, embarrassment, and human suffering. Their sole purpose during this time was to inflict pain and humiliation on someone, for a reason unknown to me. Maybe it was to make up for their own insecurities in an otherwise cruel and unfair world. To this day I still ask myself why these kids were cruel.

One of them took the cowardly opportunity to take a cheap shot and push me in the side while I was walking away from them while holding my girlfriend’s hand. This was especially embarrassing to me, because I had never had a girlfriend before, and wanted to impress her and cared deeply what she thought about me. She was nice to me, and that made me care about her perspective of me even more, and only made me not want to embarass myself even more in front of her.

The push hurt. Not only physically but emotionally too. These were the cool kids, and I didn’t want her to think I was a loser. I even cared about what the cool kids thought of me too.

I heard laughing by the other kids who were watching, and realized they were about to start their normal routine of taking turns pushing while I walked, and of taking turns humiliating me.

Then I felt something. I’m not sure what it was, but it was deep inside of me. It was this feeling of rage mixed with anger, but it also included courage. I felt this small sense of bravery deep within my heart and something was telling, “do something Zach, do something.” So I did.

When the same kid went to go and push me again I pushed back, hard. He was surprised and shocked, and almost fell down because of the blow that it gave to his body, and likely his ego. The laughers abruptly stopped, and everyone who was watching was deeply silent and had this look of shock on their face. I was almost as shocked as everyone else, and I think the shock came from the fact that I had actually taken up for myself. I walked away with my girlfriend to the lockers inside the building.

I almost felt bad for what I had done, and almost hated myself for pushing back in the first place. The looks on their faces were fear mixed with shocked, and I hated it when they looked at me like that. I almost hated it as much as I hated being bullied. It made me feel uncontrolled, like I had committed some sort of crime, even though I knew I hadn’t.

When we got back to the lockers and in other moments, my girlfriend didn’t say anything. She was a sweet girl, was always nice to me, and I miss her to this day. She could read the expression on my face, and could see I was about to bust into tears. She could feel my pain, was attentive to it, and did what was needed most in that moment – not saying a single word and just being there. It was like she could understand what was unspoken, and it was like she could understand the words that were already said, even if they hadn’t been spoken at all. I just stayed at my locker and did my very best, to fight back the tears and begin sobbing alone.

Taking up for yourself is hard. Standing up for what you think is hard. To make things harder, even when you do take up for yourself and stand up for what is right, people will still ostracize you and make you feel like you are wrong for standing up for what is right. There are mean, evil people in the world who do not care about you or your agenda. They have fallen victim to the worst parts that characterize humanity, and use their deepest insecurities, fears, and pain to hurt you and destroy every bit of you and your emotional being. This is a cruel but seemingly eternal truth.

The important key to remember is not to let these people who have fallen to cowardice not to deter you from standing up for yourself when you have been wronged. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to these kind of people, and this particular kind of evil. When I stood up to those bullies that day I had a kind of transformation. This transformation was eternal, and it made me later see the importance of standing up for yourself when people have wronged you, and are wronging you. It will bring about a new level of self-confidence, aurora, and feeling of freedom. It will make you more confident in your abilities in everything that you do, and you will remember this point when you confront something new, more challenging, and more difficult. You will grow the ever-important character traits of courage and bravery, and not only will you be able to stand up for yourself, but you will be able to stand up for other people too, which will make the whole world better.

Do these things and remember the importance of bravery and I promise you you will become a better man. You will develop more character, and will develop more toughness and grit so that people can rely on you and trust you, and you will be able to follow and trust your gut more like I did. These character traits are paramount in getting over a breakup, and becoming a better man.

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