To have smiled sweetly and said nothing to this school bully

[DrinkFromMyFountain]

14 years ago I left school. There was one girl who made my life hell, said a load of nasty things about me and told me I would never amount to anything. She also said I'd end up single and Childless at 30 working in a shop. (NB I see nothing wrong with this, but it was meant in a horrible, nasty, put downy way). This was amongst various other things she said and did to try to make my life a misery.

This morning I took my car to the car wash and saw her working there washing cars.

I ordered my car wash for my naice car with my baby DS in the back and said "fancy seeing you here". She made a grimace of a face and carried on with her work.

Karma you beauty.

FreeWee

If you think she slept around because she felt fanicable, you are kidding yourself! She was promiscuous. She saw sex as a way to get affection, probably affection she didn't get at home. And don't tell me she had a fab home life, because you don't know that!

Either way, something was missing from her that she had to sleep around to find it, at such a young age.

Seriously, you make me that you think a 15yr old somehow deserved & liked to be nothing short of used by various boys in her life.

CiderBomb

So she made your life hell, and now you are happy that her life is hell?

Nice. You are happy that she is suffering in the same way you did? Get yourself over to the relationships boards & tell me that she deserves what some of those women are going through.

Infact, go ask one of those women if they bullied anyone as a kid & tell THEM they deserved to be cheated on....go on...!!!

Bloody hell differentnameforthis you weren't there! Don't tell me what I heard her say! She told me she was gorgeous; she was all right but definitely better than me at the time. I do know she had a fab home life because like a few others on here I used to be friends with her at primary school. When we got older and went to different schools she decided to pick on me and the thing she chose was me looking ugly. She may have had low self esteem but whilst bullies deserve empathy they do not deserve sympathy if they're making someone's life hell over something they could do nothing about. Do you know what it's like being told you're ugly all the time? In front of people who were previously your friends? In front of boys at a very vulnerable time of your life? At the time I'd have thought 'at least someone wants to have sex with her'. No boy would talk to me because she told them I was frigid. Compared to her I obviously was but there were loads of my old primary school girl friends who were having sex at 14. Because they knew I wasn't going to until I was 16 they said horrible things to people who I'd previously been friends with.

I feel like you might have a personal axe to grind here differentnameforthis? You don't know the back story, I do. And she ruined my early teenage years, made me think I was ugly till my early 20s and put me down to make herself feel better. Well hearing she'd become a mother at 14 made me feel better. I felt it was karma. I had low self esteem because she made me have low self esteem. If she's projecting hers onto me then I'm not really sure why I should feel sorry for her. If that makes me a bitch then so be it. I shared my story because I do believe in karma and I felt her getting pregnant was karma for the fact she flaunted how attractive she was versus how ugly I was. She's got a second child and as far as I'm aware she's still with the second one's dad so maybe she is happy. That I don't care about either way.

Some of these posts are quite funny. But some of them are bitter and nasty.

I really don't like the ones that include the line 'as I drove past in my nice car' as if that is some kind of an achievement.

So, by that logic, if Free should have compassion and understanding for the person who bullied her because that person was being made unhappy by someone, where is the compassion and understanding for Free who is expressing her rage at the person who made her unhappy??

It never goes away.

We grow up in years but trauma is never far away. Especially that from a young age.

I think that part of the problem is that being bullied can freeze your emotional development in some ways. The mere thought of the bullying puts you straight back in that situation, feeling so helpless, worthless, unloved, unlovable etc etc, and it is hard to react to those feelings as an emotionally mature adult, even if you are one in every other way. So when FreeWee says it is Karma that her bully ended up pregnant at 14, that is the atavistic, emotional reaction of the bullied child that she was at the time.

I am sure that, given the hypothetical example of a girl, sleeping around, believing she is fanciable and special because all the boys want to be with her, she would be able to see how that girl was being used by the boys she sleeps with, and would feel sympathy towards her.

But when she thinks of this specific girl, she is responding to the monster in the closet, the hugely powerful, omnipresant being that blighted her entire life - and so her reactions are very powerful and basic.

yes

I mean I agree

I agree Hully. The damage caused by bullying can last for years, decades.
I use my years in boarding school as a touchstone, and so far nothing I've encountered in the subsequent 40 years has ever been as bad.
But now I challenge bullying when I come across it, in my job and IRL elsewhere, and I also work on helping bullies to change into something better.
But I still have sore spots and things that remind me too strongly of those days, and they sometimes catch me unawares. And I don't dance in public. That's one of the things that was taken from me.

Maybe one day she will be able to see the damaged kid instead of the monster. Knowing the damage that bullying does, I hesitate to condemn someone who isn't recovering from that bullying as fast as others think they should.

Working in a shop or cafe is often used as a put down on MN.

Minimum wage jobs as a whole are put down on MN, along with not being able to afford clothes that are acceptable, or having time and money to appear groomed and kempt.
That's nothing new.

Well - I am fucked then. I don't work, am not kempt at all (mainly because I am too fat to buy nice clothes or to look good in the ones I have), and am too depressed to bother.

bullying can be every bit as traumatic as any physical/psychological assault. we don't expect people to show compassion for those perpetrators. age of perpetrator is irrelevant to a victim.

I am unkempt, don't dye or wax and wear Per Una items.
I also have Style and Beauty hidden and have decided to ignore snotty threads about various subjects.
I may well be stuffed in the eyes of many, but I fail to care.

I am horribly unkempt

horribly

Still agreeing with you Hully, I'm uncomfortable about the victim blaming that is going on, but I've already said that earlier on in the thread.
Sometimes you can't forgive. Even if it would be healthier and better for you as well as the aggressor, you just can't.

I work in a cafe and wear mainly Primark or Asda.

I expect that makes me a failure on MN.

You know how some people shudder when they see a spider and feel physically sick?
The name Sharon does that to me.
Yet there must be many lovely women out there called Sharon.

Altho, I will say I haven't noticed those things being put down specifically? Maybe I just don't read those threads...

I wear Tu - head to toe. Buy it with my groceries, saves so much time. I don't work in a caff tho. Is there cake?

Yes, silver, I do know.