Really Just Alone.

Somehow, I thought it would all be over by now.  Was I optimistic, or just short on reality?  I really don't know.

Was our situation just that much worse?  I don't know that, either, though I am sure some folks have it far worse than we did.

Did I take the wrong actions?  Not enough?  Too much?  I am starting to believe I will never have the answers.

Last year, my daughter was bullied.  Viciously, , maliciously.  By both youth and their parents.  How did it get so far?  I thought I was striking  balance, but in reality, as my husband points out.  I let them have too much power.  And they took it, and ran.  Then they cut her off at the knees, having told lies about her and our family to everyone they could.  And they were folks with a little power to begin with.  People believed them.  For all that they knew us, people didn't stop to think as to whether these folks were honest, or even make an attempt to check their facts.

My husband, an airman, had come home from a duty assignment just in time to walk into the frey with us.  When I had told him about the suspicious things I saw happening, and that I was concerned, he had told me to stand up to them.  I had thought it would make things worse for our children.  After all, they were leaders in an extracurricular activity my children had loved.  The while mess has erupted terribly over the school year, and had consumed and destroyed the Spring Break.  As I watched it happen, I knew they were doing it by design.  I watched the entire chain unfold before me, watched them remove the threatening posts from facebook in front of my eyes to cover their tracks.  I realized that as I learned I could no longer print proof, why they had never used email to do it.  And began to realize just how long they had worked to do this.

We sat as a family, deciding what to do.  W try not to make rash decisions.  We tried to look at what positive we could for the kids, in a way of getting away from those people by the time the school yer was over.  Then the kids went back to school the following morning.  Our daughter was shaky, but wasn't going to run and hide.  Our sun was angry.

I went to a doctor appointment with an elder family member.  And the phone began to vibrate.  And didn't stop.

By the time I stepped out of the appointment, an it rang again, it was the sheriff.  Called in because a friend had turned in the devastating situation to a teacher.  They saw through her fake smile, and saw the situation as desperate, and possibly requiring charges of abuse to a minor.

But they had deleted my proof.

I put my relative back into the hands of the caregiver, and practiced my yoga breathing on the way to the school.  I pent quite some time with the Dean of Students.  She wanted Bailey to be safe at school, even though the youth and the family would have access to her there, and even though they would have to protect the rights and privacy of the other family.  My daughter had unloaded much of it as she broke down in the face of the sheriff being called in.  But in he end, as the Dean of Students had tried to reassure, the Dean felt somehow comforted when my daughter realized and said aloud that she was really just alone in this world.  All alone.

For her to feel that way at school is somehow a good thing?

After checking in with my daughter, who was fortunate enough to have been encircled y some very special friends, I went to the administrative arm of that extracurricular.  I wanted to get to the bottom of what they had really authorized, what false charges we were really up against.

Some of what had been taken from her involved the big competition the youth had been planning for over the course of the year.  We decided to focus on now, and give ourselves a week or two to get our feet under u before deciding what to do about that.  In the mean time, her robotics team went off to a big regional competition.  I was worried to let her go, but some of the youth knew, and the whole team had closed ranks around her and was such a great group of kids.  When the people had gone tot he advisers of the team to make allegations, they started to listen, but eventually decided that they knew who she was with them, and that was all that mattered.  And it was the only time we ever saw her smile anymore.  So we let her go.  The ended up receiving a tremendous award, and advancing on to the Championship competition, which would be the same week as the big final competition for the group that had hurt her so.

Deep breath.

Our younger one would still go to the local extracurricular thing.  We would make sure he was never alone where those people could get to him.  And he hadn't been the target, was too young to be competition for the youth of the family that had gone after our daughter.

Both competitions went well- the one for our son, and the one for our daughter.

Nevertheless, we knew she had a long road to climb.  Her grades had suffered, and she was still really shaky.  I thought some extra summer coursework would help make up for where she had withdrawn for such a time.  She was game, so I thought she would begin to come back.