Don’t Yell!

The last time I blogged, it was about hitting. Don’t Hit! Today I would like to talk about something that I am sure everyone has done and has had done to them in their life.

Let’s have a scenario. Say your child just said something that pissed you off so much that you stood there yelling at him or her until your voice was hoarse. Your child is standing there crying their eyes out because they had no idea it was wrong until now. Does yelling really teach them anything? Perhaps you spent an hour yelling at them and they do it again. They knew it was wrong because you told them, but they do it anyway because they want to get a rise out of you, or because they just don’t care. Do you think you should yell at them some more?

I just wonder, what good was yelling if they didn’t learn from it? Isn’t there a better way to get your point across to them without yelling? You could just sit down and explain to them the consequences of their actions. Do you think if they had a back story of why it is important to you that they never do that thing again, that it might help them learn not repeat the same action?

Here is a good example. When I was a teenager, my step father yelled at me, and I was actually the same height as he was, but I was starting to tower over him. I stood there looking into his eyes, but I honestly wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. You know how when you are getting yelled at by someone and you look at their left eye, then their right, then left, then right etc.? That’s what I was doing. I had no idea what he was saying to me because by then I was so tired of being yelled at on a daily basis that all I heard was blah blah blah blah. I didn’t learn anything because I was yelled at for the most trivial things. If he had just calmly spoke to me like I was a human being, I probably would have paid attention to every word he said.

Yelling at people is not going to change the fact that it happened. So something stupid happens, so what, get over it. I don’t like the fact that my back-up hard drive crashed and I lost 1/4 of my back-ups. I got over it. I was glad that I managed to copy 3/4 of the files to my new hard drive before it crashed. There isn’t anyone to yell at and I know I didn’t do anything wrong, and even if I did do something wrong, there was still nothing I could have done to prevent the hard drive from crashing. Shit happens! Life’s a bitch, get over it.

I used to get so angry because my partner Chip would jump into the room and surprise me and scare the piss out of me. The first couple of times I laughed it off, but the next 200 times it would make me so angry that I would literally slam my hands onto the desk, rip my glasses off my face and throw them across the room and yell at him at the  top of my lungs to stop. But he obviously didn’t learn from that because he just laughed it off and he kept doing it, and I fell for it day after day, sometimes several times a day. I scare easily, but that’s not his fault or his problem. Him doing that to me and not learning from my yelling at him didn’t teach him to stop doing it, but it did teach me to stop yelling at him because it doesn’t do any good. When I calmly explained to him that I don’t like being scared on a daily basis, he stopped doing it to me.

We hardly ever fight because we have both learned that when life hands you lemons, make some lemonade.  I’m just saying that life is too short to spend it yelling at the world. You aren’t wasting anyone’s life but your own. Yelling is pointless, so just stop.

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It Gets Better!

To the kids going back to school now and have already been called a gay slang, I can tell you from experience that it will get better.  It’s going to be rough, you will be called names, pushed, shoved and probably beat up during lunch hour or while going to your class.  I know, it happened to me many times.

My first year in junior high was the worst.  I was jumped one day, someone literally jumped on my back and he was at least 50lbs heavier than I was.  I fell on the ground with him on top of me and he began punching the heck out of me.  Because he was straddling me, I couldn’t defend myself.  I was absolutely helpless.  There was a crowd chanting about the fight and not one person helped me.  Eventually my sister did see that I was the one getting beat up and she beat the crap out of that jerk to get him off of me, and little does she know, I praise her all the time for doing that for me.

I missed PE class one day because I had gotten kicked in a very sensitive area so hard that I was on the ground for at least 10 minutes, I even got detention for that and I was the victim.  I had to look over my shoulder and I would pray everyday that I would make it home.

I tried to commit suicide many times that year because I couldn’t take it anymore.  I was called so many names, like faggot, queer, geek and nerd.  I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve that treatment, but I took it for 2 years until we left Reseda and moved to Simi Valley where things did get better.

School is such a small part of your life and once you graduate, you will find that as an adult people are more accepting.  Not that you need anyone’s approval mind you, but it is still nice to have people accept you for who you are, not who you are attracted to.  Life is so much more and your adulthood is waiting for you, so it may seem too difficult to take the abuse and you may be sick and tired of being sick and tired, but trust me, I know from experience.  It WILL get better!

Just hang in there kiddo, the future needs you.  Your family needs you.  Your future husband or wife needs you.  Heck, if you are lucky, your future children and grandchildren need you.  Without you, we wouldn’t have lawyers, judges and politicians to change laws for the better.  Without you, we may never have a gay president.  Yes, I said it!  What if you were our future president?  This country needs you to hang in there because it will get better.

I am pleading with anyone who will listen, whether it is a gay person, a mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent or friend.  Protect your family and let them know that you are on their side.  I am so sick of seeing on the news that another child has committed suicide because they were bullied.  Not just LGBT children, straight children as well.  I’m sick of it.  My heart breaks with every death.  So please, just go to that person who is being bullied in school and tell him or her that you are on their side, because that can make all the difference in the world.  They need to hear that someone is on their side and that you will always be there for them.

I am always on Facebook, so if you need someone to talk with, don’t be a stranger.  Send me a direct message, or tweet with me @DiaryofaGayNerd.  I will be a shoulder that you can cry on, but please hang in there.  School will be over in the blink of an eye, it won’t last forever.  You can do it, I believe in you!