Cruelty...

All cruelty springs from weakness.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.
-- Thomas Fuller 

Is the capacity for cruelty inherent in all of us?
-- Soledad O'Brien

Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody's business to interfere when they see it.
-- Anna Sewell  


I was the victim of bullying when I was growing up - elementary, middle and high school. Cruel children, adolescents and teens making it known that I was not welcome. 

Not accepted. 

Not acceptable. 

And making it known in cruel, public humiliating ways. There are events from my childhood that I have tried in vain to erase from my memory. Humiliations of which I will likely never speak or write ever again...but that remain burned into all of my cells.

Never understood it then and I don't understand it now...this need for and capacity to be cruel that some people possess. 

It's one thing to be stupid, thoughtless, careless...to hurt someone without meaning to. We've probably all done it at one time or another. Some of us actually recognizing our thoughtless hurting of others and attempting to make amends. Others too dumb or thoughtless to realize that they're inflicting pain.

But to be intentionally cruel. To inflict pain out of malice. With forethought.

This is a mystery to me.

A dear, dear friend is currently the victim of unspeakable cruelty. Her pain right now is unending. And so completely undeserved. 

I ache for her. 

And I am so incredibly angry at the cruel people who are inflicting this pain upon her. This torture. And it is not thoughtless hurt. It is with malice and intention and forethought.

It is so completely unfair.