Mommy Loves — Your Bullies

I am the mom who secretly loves your bullies.

And your bullies? They are survival. They are the raw, feral truth of the playground jungle. They don’t care about your feelings. They don’t care about my organic peanut butter sandwiches. They see your weakness—the same weakness I coddled—and they eat it for breakfast.

But I can’t teach you how to survive. Not really. Because survival is ugly. Survival is the shove in the hallway. Survival is the whispered joke at the back of the bus. Survival is the moment you realize that not everyone is playing by the same rules. mommy loves your bullies

You are nine years old. You are soft in a way that terrifies me. You still believe that if you are kind enough, the world will be kind back. I used to believe that too. Then I lived.

That spine? I didn’t give it to you. Your bullies did. I am the mom who secretly loves your bullies

But I am not sorry they exist.

A boy who can fall down and get up. A boy who learns that some people are just weather—you don’t beg the storm to stop, you learn to stand in the rain. A boy who will never need his mommy to fight his battles. Because that is the only kind of boy who grows into a man I can trust to be alone in this world. They are the raw, feral truth of the playground jungle

You will not remember the birthday parties I threw. You will remember the day you stood up to Derek M. and your voice shook but you didn’t cry.