Alison Sudol

Alison Sudol Instagram – I took this picture in early June of 2019. I was living in New York, in a fancy apartment with big windows that looked at another building. I had chosen almost every item in it but it didn’t feel like home. I was a kind of sad that drifted in and out of focus. I drifted in and out of focus. It was the tail end of a relationship but I didn’t know it yet. I think I knew that something was wrong, suspected I wasn’t ok, but I was so confused, tangled up in a narrative that wasn’t mine but was so loud I couldn’t hear beyond it. I couldn’t get my thoughts straight. It was abundantly clear I couldn’t change things, so I kept trying to change me. The thing about bullies is that they know how to win. They tie your hands together and convince you you’ve done it to yourself. It happens on the micro level, it happens on the macro. The world is full of bullies standing on people’s heads proclaiming it’s the only way to get ahead (yes pun bad fine) And they do seem to win, at least in the short term. I’ve never known how to deal with bullies. My strategy has been to lie down, to take the arrows out of my back when I’m alone, nurse my wounds quietly. I’ve smiled at my attackers more times than I could count, hoping they’d think me no threat leave me be. Still,I managed to put an ocean between me and that person. I’ve spent the last 6 years being very careful of who I keep around me. I’ve rebuilt my sense of self, learned how to love be loved in a healthy, kind relationship. No arrows in backs. No standing on heads. Just folding laundry together laughing. Lately, I’ve begun to step back into the wider world, and not surprisingly, bullies of past present have dragged themselves out of their caves, waggling in my face. I’ve tried lying down, but the thing is, I’ve had children now. I’m not the person I was, I can’t lie down even when I want to. Lying down keeps me up at night, every parent knows that anything that messes with your precious sleep is not worth it. It feels like a test from the universe. How to be kind yet stand up for myself? Bullies think kind people are weak, but are we? Especially when the person that is kind is the kind of person that can write songs. | Posted on 14/Nov/2025 21:34:13