I was bullied and did nothing to stop it. Neither did anyone else.
I’ve just survived my first bullying experience. I’m 55. My Bully was my softball coach; her Enforcer was another woman on the team. I and the rest of the team allowed it to happen, week after week, month after month.
Coach Bully made sure I was excluded, shunned, shut out, and punished. She spread gossip and stories about me to sow seeds of doubt about me for those on the team who seemed to like me. She was strategic, malicious, and relentless. Clearly, she had years of experience under her belt because she knew exactly what she was doing.
At our first team meeting, I noticed that she had a mean streak when she gossiped about people on other teams. She monopolized all conversation, centering it around her. The Enforcer was also a clearly unhappy woman whose dialogue dripped with snark, sarcasm, and anger. As the meeting went on, I felt more and more uncomfortable, but I was so excited to be playing ball again that I did not pay attention to the red flags being thrown onto the field with each passing moment.
I was new in town and thought playing on a softball team would help me connect to people and the community. I tried to make friends on the team and get to know my teammates. There were a lot of nice women who seemed open to getting to know me if we weren’t within earshot of Coach Bully and her Enforcer. But when they were around, or when the team was together in the dugout, it was like I was invisible and didn’t exist. No one introduced me to other team members as they showed up, nor did those players introduce themselves to me. I thought, how odd. Whatever happened to simple social graces?
By the third game, I was fully aware that the dynamic on the team was toxic. When I got hurt, no one expressed any care or compassion, let alone offered me an ice pack or bandage. It started to become more difficult for me to make sense of the dynamic because it seemed so void of basic humanity.
With each passing week, I got more and more stressed as game time approached. The closer I got to the field, the more I felt sick to my stomach, my breathing became shallow, my heart pounded, and I was anxious. I should have been feeling excited to play, but instead, I had to steel myself up for what I was about to endure and push through all the internal voices telling me to turn around and go back home where I was safe. I wanted to quit after week 6 but felt that would give Coach Bully exactly what she wanted. I kept showing up because I did not want her to win. It was a test of my will and her determination to torture me.
I started to ask myself what I did do to deserve such inhumane and humiliating treatment? Was this how they expressed their homophobia? Was it something I said? Was it something I did? What was wrong WITH ME? I mean, everyone on the team made outs and errors. Everyone — including Coach Bully and The Enforcer. Yet when I did, they acted like I was the only one. Everyone else got jokes and reassurances when they screwed up — I got benched with a silent treatment while less skilled players stayed in the game, or else I was exiled to right field.
I held on for the regular season but quit during the championship games. I had to let them win and give them what they wanted out of pure self-preservation. Once I removed myself from that toxic environment, I started to process the whole experience, which I could not — and still can’t — quite wrap my head around. I mean, these are adult women, right? Didn’t anyone tell them that the Mean Girl Club was supposed to disband after high school graduation? Apparently not, as the worst bullies and bitches on the team had a long history with each other, some dating back to high school.
I did manage to make one friend on the team — another woman also new to the team this year. Like me, she was mistreated and excluded, but not to the degree I was. At least we could support each other. But when I quit, I told her they would turn it all onto her, as they needed someone to bully. Indeed, that is exactly what they did.
I shared my experiences with a trainer at the gym. She said she went through similar things on some teams she played for. I had no idea this was “a thing,” and hearing her stories made me feel a little less alone. That told me I needed to talk more about this and stop holding it in.
I talked to my therapist next to try to make sense of everything that had happened over the course of the summer. She said that most people either side with the bully or let bullying happen. I know that how I was treated made people uncomfortable — I saw it. There was palpable tension in the air. Even still, they just looked away. I kept hoping that someone would tell Coach Bully to lay off me — that enough was enough. But no one ever did — including me.
What’s making it hard for me to understand is that for my whole life, I have stood up for and fought for underdogs. I know that if you stand up to bullies, they’ll usually back down, but if no one stands up to them, they keep right on bullying and grow stronger. Back in the 5th grade, I stopped some sixth-grade girls from bullying my friend on the playground, and they left her alone after that. We are still friends almost 50 years later. Our friendship is grounded in the trust we established that day — we have each other’s backs.
I’m hurt that my teammates who appeared to like me didn’t stand up to my bullies like I stood up for my friend in the 5th grade. But more than that, I’m angry with myself for allowing them to make me feel ashamed of myself — to make me feel like there was something wrong with me, that I deserved to be treated worse than anyone in my entire life has treated me. Why did I turn it on myself instead of putting the spotlight on their twisted behaviors? Why did I do that!!!!
There are people out there who study the psychology of bullying, and some of them are my colleagues. I’ve read their work, but it never resonated. I was always like, just stand up and kick their asses and it will stop! Why is this such a big deal? Now I think I know why it is. Bullying fucks with your mind and turns everything you think you know upside down. The violence is cloudily intangible and invisible, which makes it even more insidious and damaging.
I now have a better understanding of why kids who are bullied get sick. Why they don’t want to go to school. Why they might drop out or even kill themselves. When people don’t stand up and the bullies are given full permission to continue meting out their abuse, you feel totally hopeless. I was surrounded by 12 other women and a group of spectators and yet felt totally alone, helpless, and hopeless. And that’s not me. I am a strong woman — a survivor of many things — and I know how to pull myself out of a hole and persevere. I’m usually one of those people who rise up when people push me down or get in my way. I have no idea why that strong survivor disappeared and allowed herself to be victimized for 13 weeks.
Yet there I was. I never once pushed back. I never once told them to fuck off. I never once told them to cut the bullshit. Yeah, I’d hit the bag in my boxing class, visualizing their faces, physically preparing myself to kick their asses if literally, push came to shove, but that’s all. Instead, with each passing week, I withdrew deeper into my shame and embarrassment, shutting down more and more, knowing that teammates and spectators saw and heard everything that went down and they still just looked at me like I was a piece of shit.
I finally quit. Was that the high road? No. It wasn’t. It was as cowardly as the silence of those who saw and heard the bullying and did nothing. They won. And I hate losing. I don’t know how I’ll ever make peace with this, knowing that next year, the same thing will happen to any unsuspecting new players who fill the vacancies my friend and I are leaving. This now makes me, the victim of Coach Bully and her Enforcer, complicit in whatever they do to their next victims.
Both Coach Bully and The Enforcer suffer terrible chronic illnesses. I can’t help but think that all their nasty, hateful, negative energy in their bodies caused those diseases. Maybe that’s the case. But I find no respite in believing that — that their ultimate punishment is sickness and disease — because they will never make that connection themselves. If no one, including myself, confronts them, they will continue to abuse others, even at the expense of their own health and well-being.
I look at the scars on my leg that I got from sliding and know that those scars will probably heal long before the scars on my being. It will take time for me to learn the lessons I need to learn and to put these experiences on a shelf where I can no longer feel such deep pain.
I write this for 2 reasons. First, I need to get it out of my brain and body. Shame can’t live in the light so I’m telling my story to bring it out of the darkness in hopes that I can heal. I’m going to use this experience to try to understand what stopped me from standing up for myself. Secondly, and more importantly, I write this to ask my readers to stand up when they know someone is being bullied. It doesn’t just happen to kids. Unfortunately, a lot of adults are bullied — at home, in the workplace, in social situations, and certainly on athletic teams. Kid bullies grow up to be adult bullies because people let them get away with it their entire lives — they looked the other way, they allow the bully’s power to grow by never confronting them, or they side with them.
This world needs fewer bystanders and more UPstanders. Please choose the right side.
