Dear Bully

I didn’t see you much after that. Then I heard you’d moved away. A couple years later, I changed schools.

And then flash forward about fifteen years: I was in my twenties, working in the writing center of a college. My job was to assist students with their essays and research papers. One night, just before my shift was over, a student came in, wanting me to help her with an interview assignment. She was asked to interview someone whom she really looked up to and respected, and then to write an essay based on her findings.

To my complete and utter shock that someone was you.

The interview detailed your whole life’s story, from early childhood—a story that had been anything but charmed (to say the least)—and how, despite all odds, you’d been able to turn things around for yourself (which is why the student chose you for the assignment).

I won’t go into your life’s details here—because they’re your details to share, not mine—but suffice it to say that in that moment, reading that student’s interview about how life had been for you growing up, I couldn’t condone any of the things you’d done to me in the past, but I could almost understand why you’d done them.

After the student left the writing center, I couldn’t believe what a coincidence it was—that out of all the schools and all the writing tutors, that girl just happened to make an appointment with me.

But then I wondered if maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all—if maybe it was meant to be, that I was meant to see you in a different way and understand you a little better.

And now I think I do.

No longer your victim,

Laurie Faria Stolarz

Love Letter to My Bully

by Tonya Hurley

Dear Steven,

You never forget your first.

The first time you were forced to eat pink-colored glue on the bus and were told it was gum even though you knew it wasn’t. The first time you were snapped in the ear with a rubber band in algebra class and were made to sit still in your seat despite telling the teacher, who was also afraid, all while trying to figure out the value for x. The first time you were shaken down for lunch money or tripped in the hallway or the first time you were forced to cower in fear on the school bus or were humiliated in front of teachers and classmates in ways you could have scarcely imagined. The first time, tears streaming down your face, the teacher told you to “stand up for yourself” but did nothing to help. The first time your virginity was publicly disputed in graphic detail before you even really knew what virginity meant. The first time your innocence was taken from you, your faith in people and your illusions about the world and your place in it were thoroughly and irretrievably shattered.

I tried to deal with you, Steven, in any number of ways—by ignoring you, avoiding you, reporting you, and eventually even fighting with you. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve psychoanalyzed you in hopes of trying to understand you, to figure out how people can be so awful to one another, whether it’s learned behavior or genetic predisposition. I’ve tried to excuse you, putting your callousness down to a bad upbringing, broken home, lack of discipline, insecurity, or maybe just a lack of love in your life and compassion in your soul. I’ve even tried to forgive you, although I have to admit that hasn’t worked out very well. Like some unwelcome ex-boyfriend who friends you on Facebook or an embarrassing prom date who pops up in old family photo albums, you are unavoidable, even all these years later. My daughter even knows your name.

As must be obvious by now, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering you, some might even say obsessing over you. Way too much, in fact. I’ve searched for you on the internet to find out who you are now and what you’re up to these days, not because I care, but perhaps for an opportunity to gloat. I’ve dreamed about getting revenge on you more times than I can count. And if I ran into you on the street today, I would have just two words to say. Thank. You.

Your cruelty and insensitivity were a wake-up call, a lesson in life I would not have learned otherwise at such a young age. You prepared me for the world beyond our small town. More than anything, you motivated me. Because no matter how hard I tried to block you out, some of your insults, your criticism, stuck with me, eating at me, making me doubt myself, until I had no choice but to persevere and to succeed. If for no other reason than to show you. See, without you, there would be no me, at least not the me I came to be.