Stronger? Or just harder, weaker, and less of yourself?

Kanye West has a great song called Stronger from his Graduation album. In the background there is a robotic sounding voice that repeats "Work it, make it, do it, makes us harder, better, faster, stronger" as well as Kanye repeats over and over "That that don't kill me can only make me stronger," both of which are referencing the old saying, What doesn't kill you will make you stronger. I feel like this is only sometimes true. From 3rd to 5th grade, every single school day, a kid named Blake Polley and his group of friends would make fun of me for being fat, monstrous (I was 5'2" in fourth grade), and just straight up fat. I wish I could say that didn't kill me. I am obviously still alive, but one day after almost two years of being bullied every single day I snapped. I beat him so hard, so thoroughly, and so intensely, I broke his nose, and ejected 3 teeth from his mouth as well as cut up his lips and my hands on his braces. I struggled with depression for a little bit and as I said I wish I could say it didn't kill me. Sure it made me stronger, I watch what I eat, I work on my strength and make sure I stay skinny in response of that bullying, but the thing is that I didn't get much stronger. I would call it harder. Every time I've been hurt on an emotional level I put up another wall of defense around me. Honestly, I don't know how many walls I have around me now, what I do know is that I am a different person now. That little kid inside of me, the innocence inside of me died after that. And it has scarred me to this day, even now, almost 6 years after I finished it, after I let a beast out of it's cage to end the bullying I have this inner monologue. When someone else calls you something or says you'll never do something you have two choices, you can either say "no" and fight for it and prove that person wrong, or you can lay down and let him roll over you. I eventually got to the place where I am no longer fat. As a response to the bullying however I learned to walk around almost all day with headphones in to block out the things others would say about me. That works fine, until those things aren't being said about you, they're being said by you. And when your voice inside your head, it's hard to do anything about it, in fact it destabilizes you, it makes your security inadequate, its literally immobilizing. That has been the longterm affect that bullying has had on me, it didn't kill me, but rather it made me harder, weaker, and more vulnerable. That was name calling. In the book A Long Way Gone, a kid named Saidu talks about how every time someone attacks him with guns and spears and swords, he accepts death, but every time so far he has escaped the reaper. What he is scared of is that every time one accepts death, he dies a little on the inside, all the way to the point where he may be physically alive and breathing but only in that sense. Emotionally, personality wise, and spiritually, his body will eventually be just a carcass of what he used to be. A empty shell that simply walks around, If bullying killed my innocence, I feel that accepting certain death would be only more so. I don't know what is true as I have never fully accepted death, however I pray for those kids fighting the wars in Africa, the young kids that voluntarily entered war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the soldiers all over the world, no matter how old or young that they may be, that you can always go back to at least partially alive on the inside. I may only be 90% of what I was at the end of 5th grade now, but I've healed and I've moved forward, and I've won back some of what is lost. But just as if you believe in heaven, when you die, you may continue on into eternal life, you will never be able to inhabit a human body of flesh and bones again, and so in a way you will never make it back to 100%, I believe the same thing happens to your soul when you accept death.

War, the vacuum of trust

In the book, Ishmael writes, "This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other. Everyone who wasn't a friend was an enemy." Ishmael, the only thing that you got wrong, you specified civil war, all war does that to everyone. Many of my friends as well as 4 of my family members served as a military man in the Iraqi Freedom operation. All of them said that at first they could trust almost all of the civilians as it was easy to depict the terrorists from the civilians as they dressed in militia clothes. However after about 6 months of the war, and the insurgency finally realizing they would be much more effective at killing American soldiers by dressing up as civilians and concealing their weapons, trusting the locals instantly became a call for your own death if you were a soldier. Although the R.O.E.'s (Rules Of Engagement) stated you had to be fired on before you could fire on anyone, many US Soldiers would be on edge and threaten innocent civilians to secure their own safety, once this began, the mutual trust plummeted and most of the locals didn't trust the US Soldiers and most of the US Soldiers didn't trust most of the locals. When I moved from Souther California to the Metro-Detroit area, I experienced this in a way. It took me a REALLY REALLY LONG TIME to realize I could be myself without being afraid of everyone rejecting me. So I put up a facade, and as it felt as though more and more people were rejecting me and ever fewer people were actually accepting me. As I experienced that I started to shut down my social aspect, I went from trying to be out there to pulling myself inside a shell, and every person I met that wasn't a friend was automatically marked as enemy in my book. Now I've healed and exposed myself to the world, or at least more so, and I've stopped marking people as enemy. It can heal and will heal it just will take time.

Late post

First of all, I would like to say that I am sorry about not posting recently, I will get back on track with updating my blog, between my internet not working and not having enough time between tons of other homework for this class and my three others combined with my fall sport water polo, I have had no time for anything except sports, school and sleep.
Recently we have been reading a book called A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Child Soldier, written by a former child soldier for the Sierra Leone rebels fighting to free the people of Sierra Leone from their rulers named Ishmael Beah. During the book there are multiple times where Ishmael is struggling with the things he has witnessed, such as watching people die and seeing the aftermath of the killing that the rebels have committed. I don't know how anything could console him after seeing that, but as he says in one part of the book, every time he sees the moon he remembers things from when he was six and he's glad to know not all of him has changed. When he longs to be back with his family he thinks back to the times before the war, to the times before all of this madness happened, that is another thing that takes him out of the present and into the past, one thing that consoles him. When I am having a hard time with a day I like to go and just swim, one of the roughest days I can remember I went to my high school's pool when I lived in California, it was open for public use Mon-Sat, and swam from 3:00 to 7:00 at night to clear my head. Another thing I would do to console me or to clear my head, was to go surfing or to play music. Now that I live in Michigan vs. Southern California I sometimes sit in my bed depressed thinking back to the good ol' days of surfing, sometimes I play or music, and now I sometimes when I can I do go and just swim for hours at a relaxed pace. Nothing I can think of however would console me after witnessing what Ishmael witnessed. Or what happened to one of the boys that Ishmael travels with to escape his loneliness more than the war. One of the boys, Saidu, had three sisters, when the rebels burst in his door to kill/rape/pillage everything they had, Saidu was in the attic getting rice for his family's escape. His three sisters, 19, 17, and 15, were beaten and raped over and over and over again as his father fought to have them stop, he was beat down with the butt of a gun and his mother was beaten as she screamed how sorry she was that she brought them into this mess. He was in the attic holding his breath and listening to all of this happened, this breaks my heart for what happened, he described as though his veins were being pulled out of him viciously one inch at a time. I don't know anything that could console anyone after something as horrific as that. Ishmael didn't have it much easier and yet he was still able to console himself. My prayers go out to Saidu and all of the others that have been reluctantly dragged into this

Soldier Child

Although I am truly very interested in warfare and the strategies as well as the atrocity of this issue which is using children, as young as 9 and 10, to kill as well as to serve as sex slaves. However I am doing this blog in the moment as part of a class. Because this is a class, we have multiple sources that we are viewing, the first of many that we will watch or read is called "Child Soldier", which to be honest, I didn't expect it to change my view that much of this issue. I knew about the atrocities and absolute terrors and horrors of wars, and I thought, "Ok, this is horrible and sad, and there isn't any reason why kids as young as 9-10 years old should ever be subjected to the horrors of war. No one should have to witness a man being killed let alone having to kill another man." In the first ten minutes that thought changed completely when you heard the story of an 11 year old boy named Simon, he only told the story of the part where he was abducted, and from the translator's version of his story, within the first couple days he was forced to make his first kill. But because he was a new recruit, he wasn't allowed to just shoot him, he wasn't allowed to do anything to get it over with quickly but was rather given a hoe, one normally used to dig in the ground, but rather he had to kill a man with that same tool. Making anyone kill another man in such a personal way, especially at such a young age. This is such a horrible issue and led by a demon man named Joseph Kony, is he the only warlord that does this? No, Sierra Lionne does, many splinter or rebel groups use children, al-qaida uses children sometimes. However the biggest thing that struck me about this one is that if a child disobeys, he is not killed quickly, one of the biggest ways they are killed, is slowly with machetes and stones and beaten with the gun stock, etc. Is it a mad man who does this or a demon sent straight from hell?

Introduction

Around 300,000 child soldiers around the world are in forced active duty as they kill to survive in the ranks in the multiple different armies, both legitimate and freedom fighters, as the fight over 50 different conflicts worldwide. They cannot normally get out of this life alive. In fact, most of the children die in their first year of captive fighting. These kids are abducted from their homes when they are in their homes when they are barely in middle school. They are forced to kill their families and are then brainwashed with drugs and beatings to become soulless killers. The perfect soldier. One who doesn't question. The boys are given mind altering drugs and the girls are forced to be sex slaves. The boys are forced to kill, plunder, rape, and kidnap new soldiers and sex slaves. The women are forcibly raped over and over again as well as being beaten, sometimes to death. These atrocities need to stop. We need to figure out the fastest way to kill these crazed war  lords and return these kids to their lives as well as return the security to these kids minds all over Africa and as far as the Middle East.


My name is Connor Perry and this is for a school project. However I am actually fairly passionate about this problem and will provide accurate information from as many different sources as I can. This may not be a daily or even regularly updated blog but I will try to provide a strong point to this issue. Whether this is based on actual child soldiers or different studies on the drugs they are subjected to, the disorders they might encounter (i.e. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD) from the brutal treatment they are given and taught to give out. This blog may also have some of my personal thoughts on political issues from around the world from my view of the Arab Spring to Iran's Nuclear Program to our somewhat trivial debates about stuff like obesity.
Thank you for reading,
Connor Perry