I remember the day I started 8th grade. I had just had an amazing summer – first boyfriend at camp, got contact lenses, had my hair lightly permed – everyone was telling me how pretty I looked that first day.

And I’ll never forget that this bully looked at me with disgust and said in front of the whole class, “You can get contacts and do whatever you want to your hair. But you’ll always be a loser.”

That was 25 years ago. I remember it like it just happened. That jerk made me cry at least once a week.

Recently my mom told me he lived in the same town and never married. Hmmm. Wonder why?

Thanks so much for sharing your story…

(Here from the I’m Going to BlogHer FB group – I’m a lurker there!)

We were two peas in a pod. Our senior year was shaping up to be the best year of my entire school career. We had each other and while we still suffered and struggled, we knew we had a safe place to turn to. That was until he came out to his family.
When he came out to his family, it was terrible. I didn’t know it at the time but his mother threatened to kill him and his father wished him dead. His brothers shunned him. His mother blamed it all on me. And when he showed up to school that day in front of our small crew of friends, he walked up to me as I smiled, happy to see him, and got inches from my face and told me he hated me and that his mom told him we were never allowed to see each other again.

He spent the next 7.5 months harassing me, lying about me and my family, getting others to gang up on me, and even vandalizing my car by smashing in the windshield while I was in a class. Finally, in one of the many classes we had together, he said something nasty (that I can’t remember now) within earshot of me. I pounced. I truly had no control over myself at that point. We proceeded to beat the hell out of each other. Neither of us were suspended but we were sent home for the day and each of us had to transfer out of classes.

While I was left bewildered and mourning the loss of what I still consider to be one of my greatest friendships, he was making a sport out of doing everything he could to drive me out of his life, the school and the town. By Spring, I was failing so miserably that the administrators took mercy on me and let me pass most of my classes with the lowest grades allowed to receive diploma.

In present day, I can admit that I became a bully later in life. It happened many years later online and in the form of what I like to call ‘misguided heroism’. I would stick up for people being bullied but in turn would bully people myself. I was the bully’s bully. I thought I was justified at the time but in reality, there was no justification for many of my harsh words. I can tell you with confidence that my experiences warped my senses of wrong and right and its something I work on all the time.

Danielle, you may not realize what the point of your post is but deep down, I think you know. He took away your trust in the world and your feeling of safety in a space that should have been anything but scary. He caused you to question the dependability of the adults that you were supposed to be able to count on. He, and anyone else that didn’t act on your behalf, stole what should have been at least marginally enjoyable years of your life (because lets be honest, high school is NOT the happiest years of your life).

The point of your post is that this person and all of those people that didn’t step up, they forever changed the landscape of your life. Your view on life, your personality, your faith in the world as a whole. You may not see it all the time – but the wrinkles and cracks are forever in the landscape of your life. But that’s okay – its who you are now and its the person that people, especially your kids, love.

You are changed but you are not a victim.

Good for you for what you did in retaliating but sad that it went on for so long and no one intervened.