“A Letter to my Bully”

Hello beauties, I hope you all are having a lovely week so far and that it just gets better from here! As part of my little mini series of letters, I decided to direct this letter to “my bully”. I wanted to make a letter like this for a while now especially on this topic, so I thought why not do it now? High school was a touch era for me, and I had a lot to say but never had the chance to say it. I hope you guys like these letters, and please feel free to comment below and what you guys think of them!

To my bully,

Hi, it’s me again. I know you probably do not want to hear from me, in fact, I don’t think you have ever heard from me at all.  Isn’t that kind of weird? That I have heard you speak so many times, yet you have never even heard me? Some people think I am outgoing, funny, and bubbly while others tend to think I am more shy and reserved. I wonder what you would think of me? For someone who thought they knew me so well inside and out you would be surprised at how much you don’t know me. I think this is mainly because you never got the chance to get to know me. Instead of mumbling things behind my back and talking about me, why didn’t you just approach me? Knowing who I am as an individual, I would’ve taken the time to listen to what you had to say, but would you have taken the chance to listen to me? Probably not. So now I am going to address what I would’ve said to you, looking back on this whole situation years later down the road. I want to thank you. Not for how you impacted my life in a negative way throughout my high school experience but for making me a stronger person than I was years earlier.  Thank you for making me realize that not everyone on this earth is a caring and humble human being, but some appear to be a bit lost or maybe confused. I want to place myself in your shoes. I wondered what was happening in your life during those years to make you treat others so horribly.  I wondered if you needed someone to talk to, or maybe just to vent to. You know, my friends tell me I am a good listener, and I would’ve taken the time out of my day to listen to your life and try my best to offer advice. But you see, you wouldn’t let me, in fact you wouldn’t even give me that chance. Instead of taking the time to get to know me as an individual, you judged me before you even took that step. The glares, the rumours, the endless amount of chatter behind my back enough for me to hear, the verbal abuse over the internet and to my face all started. I wondered what was going through your head during all these attacks? Did you feel good after this all? Did you congratulate yourself after putting me down?  Did your self -esteem raise as you took some of mine?  I wonder what exactly was going through your head all these years after the tormenting. Did I let this experience ruin my life? Absolutely not. Did this awful epidemic ruin my high school experience? 100%. Want to know what frustrates me the most? Not what you did to me exactly but how I see yourself  affecting my little sisters. I see who you were in the eyes of their bully. Their personal tormenter, their intimidator, and their personal aggressor. I see the hurt that they are experiencing, and I know it first hand. Why? Because of you. Because you claimed to know me so well, and wanted to make my life a living hell. I see days where my sisters do not want to go to school because they are afraid, I see their happy selves fading because of their bully’s aggressive domineering ways. I see fear. Why should anyone in their life experience that sort of feeling ever? How is this fair to anyone? Ask yourself this. Better yet, I want you to ask yourself this when you are teaching your children good morals for school. I wonder what type of advice you are going to give your child when they experience a bully first hand, or will they simply follow in your footsteps? Will they follow your ways how you were in high school? How you treated me? How my little sister’s bully treated them? What role model are you going to be? I hope for their sake, someone better than you were back then. Someone with compassion, sensitivity, and overall portrays a positive atmosphere. I want you to give people a chance, and an opportunity for them to show you who they are before judging or humiliating them. I did not get that chance, but I really hope you give someone else it. I feel sorry for you. I am sorry you missed out on seeing how wonderful of a person I am. I am sorry you misinterpreted me, and I am sorry you had low self-esteem. Overall, I am sorry for how you were raised. Being raised to think it’s okay to humiliate a person at school and cause them years of anxiety. Being raised to treat others like shit, and hold yourself high when I know you are nowhere near that. Being raised to make someone else’s’ life miserable who never did a thing to you. I am sorry you were raised like that.

Overall, this letter of emotions I had built up over those couple of years and to this day is finally coming out. This letter is not intended to give off my hatred towards you, because then I would become the bully, you. This letter is to rather inform you of the damage you’ve caused me those few years, but the strength that grew from that. Because of you, I am more aware of how much bullying occurs within schools. I now give advice to my younger sisters to help them get through this awful situation. I give them  the advice you taught me. To never become the person you were. To treat people with the respect they deserve, and to listen what others have to say. I tell them that this is only one person in your life, and to move forward. To not let this individual ruin or control your life. I tell them they are strong. In fact, I know them way better than you or their bully will ever know them. Why? Because I took the time to get to know them. Even though they are my sisters, I took the time to listen to their stories, to know what their favourite board game is, to offer advice whenever I can, and to provide the love they deserve. This is why their bully will never know them. They did not take the time to get to know each one as a special individual. As a person. As a being who has feelings. Instead, their bully intimidates, threatens, and judges their every move. Their bully tries to make their lives more miserable than hers, just like you did to me. How dare you take a piece of my freedom away from me for those years. The ability to walk in my school with my head held high was taken from me. It’s people like you who are the ones that live the miserable lives. Not us. I often question myself as to why I was the vulnerable one. The target in your little game. Why I was the susceptible one to your endless  amount of verbal torture over the years.I want you to answer that. I specifically want you to answer this question if one of your children asks you this. If one day they experience what you did to me.  What are you going to tell them? Because they deserved it?  Is your child going to be one of the 47% of individuals in Canada that bullying happens to? For me to say that I hope your child does not experience what you put me through should mean something to you. I hope they get that sense of freedom in high school that was taken from me, because they deserve it.

From your vulnerable victim,

Alyssa