It was quite shocking to my senses as I recall, I was after all only a small boy at the time.

Perhaps it was this scarring effect that makes it so prominent in my recollections. I had thought that my family life was quite good, up until that point. I know that it may be offensive to my mother that I am even writing on this topic, but from my perspective as long as I am not slandering, then there is no major issue.

It is probable that my memory is not a paragon of perfection, but I am writing as I recall to the best of my mind’s ability after so long.

I remember for years being angry at my mother for doing nothing less than (I thought @ the time) attempting to leave us (my sisters and I.) I honestly thought we did something to make her not want to be with us anymore.

It made no sense to me as a child, and makes even less sense to me now looking back. This is the first time I am deeply touching this topic, consider it an exercise to exorcise a lot of childhood trauma. I am happy to say my mother survived her attempted suicide and is still very much alive, although she still struggles with depression issues and such.

Bully (Photo credit: trix0r)

At last, the Philippine Congress has passed a bill on anti-bullying known as the Anti-Bullying Act of 2012.  Bullies had better be aware of this development.  Their days now are numbered.

 It is regrettable that there was no law like this during my high school days.  I must admit I was a victim of bullies like that classmate of mine who looked like a rabid, dung-eating dog (I cannot remember his first name anymore but his surname sounds like Taimoy).  Modesty aside, I was more intelligent than anybody else in the class and usually topped the exams but I was very skinny at the time and he was much bigger.  Never a day passed without any insulting or sniping remarks from him and his companions like Tuyo, Gilagid, Negro, and Labi, who were also bullies.  I nearly dropped out of school because of them.  The only time I was happy was when I was cutting classes or being absent for two or three days so as not to see their faces.  I would rather see a kung fu movie than attend a moronic class handled by an equally moronic, useless teacher.

There came a time when I got fed up.  This idiot bully was burning matches and one stick thrown at me stuck at my polo shirt and made a big hole near the collar.  I lunged at him and landed a right hand directly on his chest, which was the only part I could reach—he was much taller as I mentioned earlier.  He retaliated by punching me on the jaw and before I could throw a counterpunch, someone held my hand and kept me away from him.  From then on, no more fight, only verbal attack every now and then, but that was still bullying, eh?

Bullying is generally defined as physical and verbal abuse, anything that could hurt a victim.  A UN study showed that at least 5 out of 10 children in grades 1-3, 7 out of 10 in grades 4-6, and 6 out of 10 in high school experience various forms of abuse from their peers or from their teachers. 

Effects of bullying on victims such as anger or depression may continue many years long after the bullies are gone.  Me?  If I come across them now, I will not have second thoughts.  I would hit them like a kung fu master just the same, with or without anti-bullying law.      

When did suicide become a public matter? Times sure have changed. In the past, suicides were not reported nearly as often as they are now. Not only are suicides reported more, but we feel the need to provide a reasoning for each one. Every time another child takes his/her life, the media shoves the story down our throats. The stories are almost identical. A person was bullied for this or that and they couldn’t take it anymore.

We seem to think by constantly reporting the story, we’re going to fix the problem. Instead of focusing on what the actual problem is, we settle on bullying and make another law. All of the bullying laws in the world will not stop bullying. Parents begin blaming the administrators and teachers for not putting an end to bullying. I hate to break it to you, but we teachers cannot always prevent bullying. We can’t see everything all of the time and what we don’t see, it’s hard to stop. Some of us don’t do enough to try to resolve the problem, but people need to realize there’s more than bullying going on.

Don’t get me wrong, suicide is an extremely sad situation. There are always people left behind wondering how they couldn’t see the signs, what they could have done differently, and why was the person so unhappy. Let’s slow our roll and look at all of the factors that these people had in common. I can guarantee you it was more than being bullied. There is usually something else going on such as depression, anxiety and many other mental disorders. Sometimes the person’s life has just been turned upside down by a catastrophic event like a death or a divorce. Some of those people thought they had no one to turn to in their time of need. They let it all build up until it was too much to handle and they felt it just wouldn’t get better. We have failed to notice any other problems these people could have had. In failing at that, we’re not learning more about preventing suicide. We make these people victims because we can’t believe that our family member or friend wasn’t perfect. We are a society that loves to blame everyone else when most of the time the blame can be spread around. At the end of the day, that person chose to end his/her life.

I am in no way saying that bullying is okay or that it can’t lead to other issues. I’m simply reminding you that with suicide it usually isn’t just one thing. I want you to look at the bigger picture to make sure that we’re trying to solve all of the factors. We want to focus on the programs available and make them better. If you suspect someone has a bout of depression, another mental disorder, or he/she is at the end of his/her rope, speak up.

Like a cocoon, there are those who wrap their misery around them, interacting with the world with distorted vision. Their past becomes who they are. Their identity is always that of the abandoned child, the unloved teenager, the forgotten patient. Pain and misery are an everyday companion. Sometimes this identity is kept in place very carefully, and each person who comes in contact with them must pay some price for the unfortunate privilege.

The distinct discomfort that comes when meeting or knowing one of these individuals is a shadow, compared with the very real misery a “life victim” experiences. The pain is real, and the trauma cannot seemingly be overcome. The question becomes: how hard does the person try? New friends and supportive social groups can become just another sounding board for the victim’s misery without any real desire for change.

How does one “make” someone else want to see life differently? How many great experiences, words, expressions of love, will be enough to wake a “victim” up to the reality that they are loved and needed? That negative behaviors (physical violence, threats of suicide, cruelty and deep depression) need not be the future.

Self-determination is a gift we all have been given. We decide if our life is going to change. Until we understand that no one can change our life for us, or how we feel about our life, our circumstances or our history, we can continue to “live the misery”. There is much to be gained in inflicting anger on others. It makes people react, and prompts people to reassure them, and through guilt, obligation or fear, some are enslaved

While it may sound cold, a victim can control others by constantly holding the bar too high for anyone to jump. Therapy sessions, loved ones, scholastic achievement, medical treatments and social contacts can all fall away as they hit the cocoon kept carefully in place. Not only does this wall keep people ineffective, it keeps the victim in their deliberate misery.

Unfortunately, those who care about these “victims” become victims themselves, finding themselves co-dependent to their abuse and control. Some want to get out of this entrapment, some do not. Guilt keeps many tending the fire, and the thought of “abandoning” this person is almost unthinkable.

We all have choices. We can stay in a building that is burning, or we can get out. If the ship is sinking, we know that we will drown if we stay, so we head for the lifeboat. This is common survival practice, and it is second nature for any animal to run away from danger and destruction. Making that choice is not one that can be made through our emotions. Desiring a better life must come because we cannot imagine the years ahead filled with misery, whether it is ours or someone else’s.  Walking through the fire of feelings of guilt, loss, responsibility and love, we can at least save ourselves from becoming a second victim to a scenario designed by someone else. 

When the weapons a sufferer has are not getting the desired responses, a “victim” will often emerge from the cocoon. When control is no longer there, when ears are no longer listening and there is no one left to abuse, choices become clearer, and motivation to change may begin to appear after a time. This may require physical absence of support. Initially, the volume will be increased, the blame will become deafening. But change, if it is to happen at all, must come because the person who is “living the misery” comes to understand that there is a whole world that offers choices of life design.

It is quite obvious that these people are unhappy with themselves. Some are bitter because they are overweight or lonely. Some mother’s become bitter because they want to be in their children’s lives. It is so hard to deal with a person filled with bitter thoughts or moods. It makes me down right angry when a person like that causes havoc. Bitter people will play mind games and they are quite controlling. You must protect your self and family from these people and pray for them. I know many bitter people and they are sure no fun to be around. Limit your time with a bitter person so that it won’t rub off on you.

Therefor, only one who is careless of his or her life… or a fool… approaches, let alone openly seeks out, welcomes, and embraces the unknown wholeheartedly and without caution.

This is not the same as those rare, extreme, but nonetheless real moments in our living and exploration of life when we may be faced with having to choose between the certainty of destruction or death on the one side, and the unknown, which may hold out at least the possibility of success and life on the other…

… those (hopefully few) times in one’s life when hope must, and rationally does, rule against caution in choosing the unknown, our doing so then coming from our thrust FOR life, being at those moments the only – and coldly logical – choice to be made to HAVE a chance to live by experiencing the glory of a miracle in random chance… or the Universe’s (or God’s, if you prefer) blessing… instead of the sureness of non-existence.

But in our everyday lives, what is much more often the case is that we hold on to many things that make us unhappy because, for bad or worse, they are familiar and have become “home” to us… the place inside and outside us to which we have become accustomed or inured (which is often a palpable dullness), but are at least certain that they exist… fearing that to venture outside of and beyond what we know simply for the sake of what only MAY be is to risk that the unhappiness, and the awareness that we feel that we somehow don’t “fit” well in our life as we’ve come to know it, may get even worse, that we might not even be able to return to living even with the degree of unhappiness we’ve become used to and know that we can at least live with (despite our discontent)…

… and prove to us NOT that our hopes for the existence of “better” may be real, but that our fears that we cannot… and will NEVER… experience the happiness and joy that our souls innately know and so BELIEVE life is capable of containing for us are (real)…

… causing the loss of all hope… which we fear would be the death of our soul.

In that way, accepting unhappiness in our lives and becoming content with it is to live by a compromise with our desire for happiness, a kind of wager with our souls, clinging to the hope that we may yet find or achieve happiness, but doing so ONLY by never risking loss of it by ever actually seeking it out and possibly not finding it, or, having found it, finding that it doesn’t last as long as our unhappiness does.

And therein lie the half-lived and continually unhappy lives of countless many…

.. existing in the purgatory of the misery of life, while believing that they may be avoiding something worse, Hell… which is to live with the soul’s having died…

… by never taking the chance – in any way other than in our dreams – to be more fully alive, to look for and possibly find and live our dreams, and to soar.

It is no wonder, then, that depression makes us want to sleep…

… depression being so often the sadness and frustration of feeling only partly alive and hopelessly “lost” without enough of a functioning sense of ourselves and who, and what we are (which is the inner flame of our souls) to even know where to LOOK for happiness and fulfillment… let alone find it.

That older adults’ maintaining sexual activity may have a positive association with mental health corresponds with theories that hold social support and activity produce mental health. These theories lend support to the idea that sexual activity could be associated with lower depression among older adults, since sex could induce the feelings of belonging associated with perceiving social sup- port and may be a socially meaningful activity. Social support theories hold that health-promoting resources flow through the networks that connect people to one another.

Sex could be more than the context of developing support; it could also play important roles in forging connections between partners. If sex is a meaningful social experience, it could induce a more exclusive type of increased support of and care for a partner. Findings that perceptions of social support influence psychological well-being (Yang 2006) lend support to this idea, since people are more likely to perceive support when it seems exclusive.

Activity theory holds that engaging in physical and mental activity underlies healthy aging by providing people with self-concepts and self- esteem while also preventing or mitigating the ef- fects of role loss. Research suggests that aging adults experience shifts in the quality of emotions they experience, as passive emotions gain in prominence compared to active emotions. The increased prevalence of depression among older adults compared  at ASA – Am smh.sagepub.com Downloaded from to middle-aged adults reflects this shift in emotions (Ross and Mirowsky 2008). The discussion of emotional change suggests that the affective character of activity may play an important role in influencing how activity affects mental health:

People who participate in activities evoking positive emotion, such as certain forms of sexual activity, could have lower rates of depression. As suggested by activity theory, depression sometimes increases in later life due to transitions that lead people to give up activities that were important for their identity. In adulthood, sexual activity, particularly but not exclusively in the con- text of long-term relationships and marriage, is normative. Sexual inactivity therefore could have potentially deleterious effects on mental health because it could indicate a loss of a component of one’s identity. This idea echoes Umberson, Crosnoe, and Reczek’s (2010) conclusion that the symbolic meaning of activity could influence the development of shared understandings that enable health-promoting coping, social support, activity, and relationships. Cultural beliefs about the importance of an activity provide evidence of such symbolic meaning. The general pop- ulation believes that sex is important for adults’ mental health. For example, one study of the well-being of 1,000 employed women found that they rated sex as providing the greatest contribution to happiness of any activity. A survey of 27,500 men and women ages 40 to 80 worldwide similarly found sexual activity consistently associated with quality of life and emotional well-being. Transitions of aging possibly could alter the experience of sex, changing its frequency or context. Older adults who no longer engage in sexual expression and activity may feel ‘‘a lack of tenderness, insufficient loving bodily contact and loneliness’’. Sexual intimacy’s link with warmth, care, and acceptance could thereby induce feelings of belonging. As such, sexual activity may be an emergent social experience that reminds people of their connections to others, recalling Durkheim’s ([1912] 2001:314) description of effervescent social action as a source of energy much like ‘‘contact with a source of heat or electricity to warm or electrify’’ that binds people into social relations. Such experience ‘‘strengthens emotions . . . by bringing all those who share them into more inti- mate and more dynamic relationship’’ with each other (Olaveson 2001:100), creating a sense of belonging and mattering and contributing to mental health. If it engrosses partners in shared union, sex may elevate people beyond individual experiences. This social experience could provide social uplift resulting in benefits for mental health, particularly in the face of wider cultural emphases on individualism.

As an experience, sexual activity is distinct due to its intimate qualities that set apart the shared activity (and participants) from other people. Practices that reinforce intimacy cultivate meaningful ties that distinctively identify a relation between people from other types of relations; that is, intimate ties have an element of social closure. Given the importance of trust to intimacy, intimate relations inherently involve some attention to others. Accordingly, we suspect that the power of these intimate experiences to have enduring beneficent effects derives from the qualities of activities that take account of and are oriented toward others. Not all sexual experiences, however, are expected to create such a state. Positive meanings seem more likely when partners understand sex as a shared, mutual experience—demonstrating aware- nests of and orientation toward each other and how they each experience the activity.

 Accordingly, we hypothesize that sexual activity that incorporates more affection, such as caressing, hugging, and kissing, will have a greater effect than just the physical pleasure associated with sex, because these affectionate actions indicate a greater sense of intimacy and orientation toward another person.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s National Vital Statistics Report of 2002, 50% of first marriages ended in divorce and 60% of remarriages end in divorce. With these kinds of statistics, and with all the problems and pain a couple goes through, why do people still want to get married? 

Even though marriage receives so much bad press these days, walking the aisle is still a very popular exercise. After all, it is human nature to want to feel nurtured and secure.  Getting married is still very much desired for all its promise of unconditional love and companionship.  

But marriage is so much more than just the wedding ceremony or the honeymoon.  It is more than just the intimacy and fun that every couple deserves.  Marriage is also about building a family.  Traditionally, raising children is part and parcel of a marriage partnership — a task that entails the provision of shelter, clothing, education, and love without which no child can live without. Just as couples want to feel they belong to a loving relationship, so do their children. It also goes without saying that if a marriage is broken, the children would be emotionally affected by it together with their parents. The effects of divorce on children are important to any good parent. But it’s not always easy, when a marriage is struggling and someone is hurting, parents should also consider what the specific effects of divorce will be on their children. 

There have been many specific studies focusing on the effects of divorce on children. Studies show that children from a broken family are emotionally affected by the marriage breakup and they know that nothing will ever be the same again. They fear change. Not just that the mother or their father will not be around, but they may also lost contact with their extended family, or school routines may change.

Children have a fear of being abandoned. When parents are at odds and are either separated or considering separation, children have a realistic fear that if they lose one parent, they may lose the other. The concept of being alone in the world is a very frightening thing for a child.

Children who have a natural attachment to their parents also fear losing other secure relationships such as those they have with their friends, pets, siblings, neighbors, and so on. Sometimes children are simply attached to their surroundings, and moving into new surroundings can cause an understandable negative reaction. Divorce has also been found to be associated with a higher incidence of depression; withdrawal from friends and family; aggressive, impulsive, or hyperactive behavior; and either withdrawing from participation in the classroom or becoming disruptive.

Academically, children are greatly affected because of their parents divorce or separation. Children from divorced families drop out of school at twice the rate compared with children from “intact” families. They also have lower rates of graduation from high school and college. Children from divorced homes performed more poorly in reading, spelling and math.

Moreover, children of divorced parents are more likely to become delinquent by age 15, regardless of when the divorce took place. Anecdotal evidence points out that parental divorce and living in a single-parent household can influence a person to have thoughts of committing suicide.  Drug use in children is lowest among those children who have been spared from the effects of parental divorce.

Even if there are have been tension and problems at home, some children will be shocked to learn that their parents are getting a divorce.  It may take some time for them to acknowledge and accept that their lives will be different. To help a child cope with shock and stress, parents should be patient with them,  ease into the new routines and living situations if possible and constantly express and reassure their love to them. Based on research, these are the top five reasons why people get married:

1. To signify a life-long commitment 

2. To make a public commitment

3. To legalize their partnership or for financial security 

4. To formalize their partnership as part of religious belief

5. To provide security for children. 

But long after the celebration of the wedding and years after the honeymoon, when reality sets in, many marriages fail to survive.  Despite all the happiness and joy that was shared between the man and the woman during the early years of marriage, they end up separated or divorced — placing their children’s security, health, and well-being at serious risk.

It was a well-known fact that decades ago, before there were televisions, radios, or computers, men only had one form of leisure, reading. Our ancestors just read to keep themselves abreast with what is going on with their surroundings. They read so they can travel and experience the world. But with the influx of modern technology such as the Internet, cell phones and electronic games, the younger generations have somehow placed the skill and virtue of reading at a  back seat.  Many young people have lost the passion and skill to read and, instead, they waste their time and resources by playing video games or hanging out in the mall. 

It has been observed that children and teenagers who love reading have comparatively higher IQs. They are more creative and do better in school and college. The children who start reading from an early age are observed to have good language skills, and they grasp the variances in phonics much better.

But while other kids developed the love for reading and learned it easily, there are others who seem to have difficulties in engaging in this type of normally stimulating activity. These children are often diagnosed as suffering from a form of disability called dyslexia.  Dyslexia is an impairment in the brain’s ability to translate written images received from the eyes into meaningful language. Also called specific reading disability, dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children. It is affecting 5 percent or more of all elementary-age children. 

A child who has dyslexia might start out doing fine in school. But gradually, it can become a struggle, especially when reading becomes an important part of schoolwork. A teacher might say that the child is smart, but doesn’t seem to be able to get the hang of reading. If a teacher or parent notices this, the best thing to do is to go to a specialist who can help figure out what’s wrong.

Dyslexia can be difficult to recognize before a child enters school, but some early clues may indicate a problem. If your young child begins talking late, adds new words slowly and has difficulty rhyming, he or she may be at increased risk of dyslexia. Dyslexia may occur in children with normal vision and normal intelligence. Children with dyslexia usually have normal speech, but often have difficulty interpreting spoken language and writing.

The cause of dyslexia seems to be a malfunction in certain areas of the brain concerned with language. The condition frequently runs in families. Treatment plans for children who have a specific reading disability should follow a sequence. The first intervention that should be tried, particularly with young children, involves systematically teaching word decoding skills. These are generally called phonics-based intervention approaches. There are many variants of phonics-based approaches and no research indicating that one approach is superior to another. 

Dyslexia, as a learning disability is a condition that produces a gap between someone’s ability and his or her performance. Most people with dyslexia are of average or above-average intelligence, but read at levels significantly lower than expected. It has nothing to do with IQ; many smart, accomplished people have it, or are thought to have had it, including Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein. Dyslexics are unusually insightful, who bring a new perspective, who think out of the box.

Without the needed support for dyslexics, dyslexia can snuff out dreams at an early age, as children lose their way in school, fall into depression, then lose their self-esteem and drive. Dyslexics don’t outgrow their problems, and reading and writing usually remain hard work for life. However, with proper teaching, counseling, and adept tutoring, they do learn to manage.

When thinking of all of those political science theories on how the State was developed, a lot of the earlier thinkers believed that “man was always in a state of war with man.” People only formed communities because there was a strength in numbers. There was the convenience of having another person around to help protect mutual interests. There was the peace of mind that the laws governing man would protect him from others – laws created to tell man what he cannot do without facing punishment. Good will is not written in the base nature of the human race – not really anyway. 

These are the words of a misanthrope who spent all of life trying to be liked and to stand amongst those whom society admires: the men who stand within the upper tier of society with regards to success, wealth, and intelligence. This is a person who has spent life focusing on what other people think, what unintentional words may slip from the mouths of “friends” and “family”, and the overall sense of worthlessness instilled by those with the duty to nurture. These circumstances beget a person who has no place in the glittering society of men of higher learning and can imagine no place to exist elsewhere.

Lets start with the misanthrope’s earliest memory. He is thirteen and among friends. He is then surrounded by a group of older boys who demand his pride, recognition, and self-respect. His friends shrink away to the corner of the street and wait for the scene to be over. Thirty long minutes pass and not a single adult or passerby-er intervenes. It’s as if they were invisible, as if the situation was too ugly to acknowledge so it’d be best to let it take its course and disappear on its own. The boy goes home afraid, ashamed, and alone.

Lets end with the knowledge that twelve years have long since passed and his view of people is colored by negativity and by ugliness. The society that he had willingly subjected himself to for the past twelve years was ugly. It made him ugly. It makes everything he sees so ugly. It makes everything he hears sound like lies. It makes him want to crawl out of his skin from self-disgust and from being tainted by this way of thinking and for living with this idea as the ultimate truth. To him, there is no where to go. To him, there is only silence. To him, numbness is salvation and a fleeting form of happiness.