My struggle

 

Most of us, who came from decent family backgrounds and neighborhoods may be heard of school bully but if you have never involved in one, you may not have an exact idea what it is like. 

My first time getting bullied was during my first year in kindergarten. For more than ten five years old kids were kicking and stomping on me while I curling up to hide my head and stomach on the floor at the corner of the classroom. The beating lasted for about twelve seconds but it felt like years. From that, I suffered from a broken skull and nose, bruises all over my body from head to toe. I was bloodied all over my body, with dirted and torn shirt. That was not the only time that happened in my life. It happened again and again. I was broken physically and sometimes mentally.

You may ask how and why that happened? Have I done something wrong? 

Reviewing this event after twenty-five years, I will have to say I did nothing wrong. I was just like you, thinking where I did wrong but today I will have to say those kids did it for fun. It sounds unbelievable that those innocent kids did such evil thing but we have to see thing as it is. We have to swallow the fact that despite age, humans have a fallible nature that some of us in nature love to hurt others for fun or as a sport. You may want to consider what happened in the Colosseum during Romans times. Today, a toddler could be raped by a bunch of teenagers for fun. In some Muslim countries, they may even blame you for your revealing clothing. But think about this without prejusdice for a second! Any kind of crafty reasoning may not excuse us from the fact that our lustful nature is the root that has driven us to such a crime. We could blame our parents, upbringing, and surrounding influences but how are you gonna justify it on a group of five years old kids. Are they to be blamed if I died? Of course, they have to still be responsible for what they have done yet God kept me alive today to tell you the story.

You may also ask why the school, the teachers didn't back me up? It was simple, it was because the Chinese private school couldn't afford to offend their sponsors. The school chose to protect their interest by labeling those bullies as rough play. There was one time my mom got so mad and confronted the school and the kids' parents but there was nothing else she can do. She could transfer me to the other school but that will be too far from home and we were not well off financially. I used to go home with bloodied shirt and limbs but after some time I would tell my mum I fell.

I remembered I used to pray so hard before sleep and going to school that no one will bully me today. I would wear all kinds of talismans so maybe they will protect me because no one else would. Was it helpful? Sadly, no. No gods nor angels appeared when those bullies chose to break my neck. As a result of long-term bullies, I have nasal bone injuries that caused me to have severe nosebleeds that lasted for seven years. Some of the scars for example on my right elbow due to the fall from the push still visible today. The bullies ended when my grandmother died four years later when I was in primary two. From there I have to leave my grandmother's house to live with my dad and started my primary three in a mini-school with only twelve of us in the school including the academic staffs. In there, I enjoy three years of peaceful life.

However, when I got to secondary school when I was thirteen years old, the old nightmare came back to haunt me. The bully in secondary school is quite different from the previous one. It was made complicated by the triad gang and racism issue in the school with older kids. To avoid having an issue, I chose to comply or made myself invisible among the students. I saw many kids bullied by older senior kids but I chose to remain silence. You would see chairs flying in the classroom and police visited the school sometimes. The worst is when the outsiders were summoned to gang fight the kids in the school. You would see helmets flying and bloodied kids on the floor, stomping by the gang. This is definitely the next level compared to primary school. 

I hated bullies and the gang members so much that I hope they would die in a traffic accident due to their reckless stunts on the road. By then, I have taken up martial arts classes and boxed for years. Judged from my experiences, in times of crisis, no one could really help you. If you chose to remain unathletic, you can't even outrun a chicken. I would have a jeans pant sew tight at the end, filled with sand as my punching bag. The bag weight up to twenty kilograms but was as tough as a rock due to the compaction of the sand particles especially at the bottom of the bag. Due to years of kicking and punching the bag, my right knuckle is slightly bigger than my left with a thick layer of skin or callus growing on top of it. 

I never wanted to fight but I wanted to survive. 

That's the only thing that you can do when you live in an outlawed environment where violence rules. 

Murphy law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

It was unfortunate that I have to use violence to confront violence at last.

There was always someone who wanted to bully someone for fun. And I wouldn't allow that to happen to me. Not anymore. I ended up fighting the bullies multiple times in school. I fought the same size, I fought the bigger guy, and sometimes even the smaller guys. What a disgrace. Sometimes, I got beaten up really badly but I'm tired of running away or hiding. I would stand there even confronted by a group of them if it is necessary. I am not a bully, nor I will pinch someone for fun but I have to say no to those who bullied me for fun. The secret here to confront a group of men is to be cruel. Be cruel to the weakest among them, when they see blood and mess in one of them, they will choose the flight mode. Bullies are loud when they're in a group. Just like street dogs, they are daring when there are many of them. For me, I chose to whoop their ass because if you don't, they will whoop yours and you could die, because oftentimes, they brought weapons alongside. 

I remembered going to the principal office multiple times and even police stations. I'm not proud of it but I did what I need to survive to today to write you the story. I remembered one time I have to fight a giant kid in a rainy day during my final exam. I was badly wounded in the fight before I have to take the geography subject. I did badly that year of course but I never gave up. The next year I scored six excellent grades among eight subjects without attending tuition classes for my PMR exam. 

I started training in the national judo training camp with top athletes in Malaysia when I was there in university. By then I have became the first non-Muslim in Malaysia to earn the 4 stripes blackbelt or khatam in Silat Lian Padukan or better known as the self-defense system used by the palace guard of Johor Military Force in the '80s. That including weapons training and fighting a group of well-trained seniors for grading.

I wasn't into fighting. I actually hated it so much but I was thinking what if a stronger guy came by and decided to hurt me and my loved one one day. With years of intense training, I eventually torn my right knee ACL during a judo randori (sparring) session. It doesn't stopped me from training anyway. Two months after the ACL ligament tear, without surgery, I went to judo training at Hokkaido University. The Kosen judo training in Japan is not the most intense training I had in life but it was the most bloodied training I had. Due to extremely dry weather during the winter in Hokkaido, we rarely sweat to soothe up the fiction between our thick coarse judogi (uniform) and the skin. As a result, most of us are bloodied with our white judogi soaked in red blood after the training. Some of us with broken ears and foreheads continued on training by taping ourselves. Sometimes, we looked like a walking mummy with those white tapes around our palm, ankle, and forehead.

I thought bully is going to stop when I hit adulthood but it happened again when I came back home to Malaysia. I have a rough neighborhood. Some of the bullies still stuck in their fantasies, thinking they're unstoppable with their gang members. There was one morning I was woke by my mum at seven thirty. She asked me to walk my dog back as there was a group of people trying to stop him from coming home . I hated to go there I but have to. Upon arrival I saw bunch of street thugs with wooden sticks and bricks blocking the narrow bridge connected the neighbor street to mine. They vowed to kill my dog today, claiming he intruded their area. It was nonsense for me and I decided to walk my dog back despite what they said. I thought it would be fine if I show up and walked him back. 

One of the thugs swung his six feet pole to me. My immediate reaction was to block it and things escalated fast. He has to drop the pole as I held it tight and we started to scramble on the street. My natural reaction was the "neck tie" I practised for years on the mat as a standard approach in wrestling. As he started to throw punches, I took him down by a standard corner throw and I myself drop on his body and exerted a knee pressure on his belly. I thought everything is under control but another guy attacked me from the back by choking my throat. The older thug got up and both of them started to throw punches on me. I knew there was no way for me to escape as I was surrounded. I threw few counter punches and knocked both of them to the floor. The older thug got knocked out and seemingly suffered of concussion as he was unconscious with spasm and blood dripped from his nose. This is not something unusual in the dojo but I know for an average Joe like this guy, he needed to be hospitalised asap. I stopped countered attacked but tried to just blocked those punches and kicks away so that they would noticed the situation of their member. It took them a minute to realise that to feed his medical needs. Ironically, those thugs chose to go police station to file a police report instead of going to the hospital.

It was funny to see a group of tattoos men filed police report claiming they were assaulted by me .

I have to file a similar report as well as the concussed guy may die. The lease justice the police stations can give to me was the case ruled as self defense and it was resolved in days. It happened when the concussed guy admitted he initiated an attack with weapon after a series of interrogation and the inspector threatened to sue them according to weapon assault act. In the following weeks, I received couples of threats to kill me when I'm on street through the third parties. I knew that was coming and I have to go out with a pocket knife and make sure I was not followed. I heard one of the thugs suffered of broken ankle and skull and have to spend months on bed. I'm sorry to hear that but I think God used me as their Karma. The last time I received a threat, I told them I could inflict a heavy collateral damage by law and even by myself if they kept on disturbing me. I was given an emergency number of a special force in Alor Setar by the inspector that if the gang gathered in front of my house or intentionally inflict damages on our property, I can always call that number. I think I'm covered somehow by law enforcement and I have costed more than what the thugs could imagined. However, I chose to leave my hometown three months later as I have no peace in my mind. I knew it could happen again if they meet me somewhere and I won't withdraw, compromise or yield.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

As a Christian, I believed if God could make Israel a nation, built them military force and put them in war, it means He allows us to at least defend ourselves when it is needed. I'm not a fan of violence but I believed sometimes, a minimum amount of violence is needed to counter violence in reality. That is why we have laws to punish those outlaws. I believed as a man, if you never bother to pick up a self defense class to protect yourself or your family members, you're just as irresponsible as those who chose to assault your families. It's a complete different topic if you failed to protect them but at least you have to play your part around, which is to learn what a man should, to take up physical training, to learn how to defend against punches, kicks and knives. Just imagine your wife and your underage daughters are raped in front you and they screamed "Dad, help me"! Without a proper training, even if you were given a sword, you won't be able to save them.

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

― Socrates

A family unit is like a nation or palace in itself, a king have to decide on how many archers, horseman, standing military and arsenals they should have. He has to put efforts in protecting the young and weak in the nation. It would be imbecile to think you could do nothing and God will send angels in time of needs. God wanted you to play your responsibility. That is why we have all the legal system in the world because 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," 

― John Stuart Mill

Please share me your stories if you experieced a bully before! 

Till then!