AIBU to wonder if bullies from school look at you now and regret how mean they were?

[Madeupforthis]

I was bullied at school for a variety of things. Overweight, glasses, bad hair etc. Didn't help that we were dirt poor, my DM was a single Mum and we a family tragedy when I was 13 which made me tearful all the time.

Mine was constant low level bullying. Anyway, now I am older I look like a film star compared to my teenage self! Weight off, good glasses, I've aged in to my face nicely (VERY well in comparison to the bullies) and I have even bumped in to some of the lads in our year who have chatted me up and told me that I look great (arseholes, like I am going to just forget 5 years of insults).

In most cases I look better than the bullies for my age and have a good life - I have done very well in my career and have a great range of interests and great friends now. I wonder if the mean girls look back and think, wow, I should have been nicer especially now that I look worse than Madeup ever did and made her life hell for it

I seem to remember that at my school it seemed very hormonally driven - girls (it was a girls school) who had been perfectly nice, normal human beings turned into absolute nightmares at about age 13, then re-emerged as human beings about age 15-16 and became okay again. I remember being very nonplussed by the form some of the bullying took - like the day I found someone had squashed a sandwich into my shoe while I was doing PE - just, what sort of a kick do you get from stuffing a sandwich into someone's shoe? Weird.

Of the three girls that bullied me incessantly at school, one messaged me on FB years later to say "sorry" and that she was a very angry child.

One friended me and seems to have forgotten it happened and thinks we were great friends.

One killed herself in her twenties.

I mostly feel sorry for them now. I suspect bullying is a sign that something is very wrong and long term I kinda won at life. They really didn't.

I feel nothing but remorse for the way I behaved at secondary school. If I could go back and change it all I would.

I have one girl who continually tries to add me on FB and instagram. I have rejected her request 3 times and she still keeps sending them. I wonder if she is sorry or forgetful! Haha!

I only mention appearance as this was specifically what I was bullied for.

Good for you OP, you actually sound like you have some confidence in your appearance which is what these bullies tried to take from you. They failed!

I've sometimes wondered this too, not so much in terms of how I've turned out, but now that they've got kids whether they'd allow them to be little shits like they were or whether they realised how awful their behaviour was & try to bring their children up to be decent.
i don't dwell on it though

If you had grown up to be an unattractive woman, do you think they should have felt vindicated?

We went to watch Sarah Millican in the summer and she said her school bully has emailed her, a long boring email (she read it out loud) of how much her family moves due to her husbands good job etc. She tells her how coll that she is on TV now and they have to meet to catch up. She said she replied: "No thanks, I don't have a good memory of you".
The went onto saying that she might send her the DVD of the tour with those bits in, but then she recapitulates "nah she can fucking buy it herself".
It is absolutely brilliant!!

*cool, not coll

will anyone admit to being a bully in school and say how they feel about it now?
Did you think they 'deserved' to be bullied because they were fat or socially awkward? I know that adults often look at bullying with the perspective that there is some reason that the person is being bullied; victim blaming I guess.

I think bullies are like everyone else. So some of them will gain emotional awareness with age and feel bad that they bullied you. Others will probably just continue to bully as adults.
Oh, and some people who were nice become more mean-spirited as they experience knocks through life and so may become bullies as they age.

No Meeep, because I am rich in love. Like I said, appearance was their main target and so I am musing how in their shallow minds, they feel about their actions now - especially that I am no longer by their definition, ugly.

calculators I admitted it up thread. I would give anything to change it. I have no excuses for my actions. I have changed. I am not the same person I was. And I always feel disgusted when I thibk about my behaviour. :(

I doubt they care what you look like or what your job is. RunRabbit has it, I think.

Sorry you had such an awful time.

When I came face to face with one of my school bullies last year she acted all nice and friendly as if we were good friends.
To be honest it made me sick how somebody who led to me needing therapy due to their bullying could seemingly have such a different memory of how they were at school.

I was never bullied as such but I always remembered a really nasty comment a boy in the year above once said to me. I met him a few years ago at an event and he said he didn't remember me from school. I told him I remembered him because he'd said X to me. He was mortified and truly apologetic. He said he'd had quite a difficult time at school and had tried to mask it by showing off, acting tough etc. I really saw him differently after that and I wonder if similar was true for lots of the other 'mean' kids.

I was bullied quite heavily between the ages of 9-11 and I honestly think my bullies don't even give me a second thought - not in a sad way I just think it was so long ago now, why would they? I just wish that 9 year old me could have looked ahead to how things are now and known that life really does get better. It's mad, I used to look at the kids bullying me/the kids enabling the bullies and wish I was them and not me. Now I'm very glad wishes don't come true! I love my career, my family and I've traveled a lot, had some proper adventures. The people that bullied me mostly have not even left their hometown and are either unemployed or have a job that sounds pretty dull to me. If they're happy then good for them but that's not the life I would have wanted for myself so I'm ultimately glad I was bullied as it did have the effect of pushing me forward to better myself. What's the saying? The best revenge is living well?

Maybe bullies should be confronted if they ooze up to you, all smiles. They deserve it.

I accepted a friend request on FB from someone who was vile to me at school - mainly because I could see from her profile pic that she now had a face like a beach ball with straw stuck on it and I wanted to see if the other pics were as bad

Anyway, fast forward a few months and I posted something about bullying in relation to a news story. She private messaged me to say she knew she'd been one of the bullies I'd suffered with and that she wanted to apologise. I actually thought that took some guts. We're not going to suddenly become best mates, but it's nice to know some people do grow up to understand the consequences of their actions. She now has a baby on the way and will hopefully steer her child in a better direction.

I agree with they re write history. I was bullied and hated school, I can still remember standing up to one of the bully's one day who everyday taunted me on the bus and at school and would purposely trip me and told her that I felt sorry for her that due to her insecurities she had to be so horrible to me when I had done nothing to her and that she only felt better about herself by being a bully, this was after about 8 years of her crap. She looked shocked that consistently belittling me, telling me how crap I was could actually be called bullying. Its a shame people don't realise how much words hurt and the old addage stiocks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me is crap. What was said to me in school broke my self esteme and though am happy now am super critical of my self.

The bullying I experienced in primary was low level and looking back on it I understand how my extreme shyness and social awkwardness did not help. I did try to explain to one girl later in high school how it had made me feel but I guess we were still to young to really work through. I have moved away and don't see any of those ones anymore, I stay of Facebook to avoid being nosy and for people who don't speak to me from school to gawk at my life.
The only thing about the whole thing is that, that girl died before she was 30. A victim of suicide and she never had the chance to find her partner or have her own kids. I just feel sad and regret when I think about it all now.

Its the workplace bullies I wonder about - those who did it as adults, fully aware of how hurtful their behaviour was. An ex-colleague who was horrible to me recently friend-requested me on FB. I accepted her because I wondered if she might be wanting to apologise, but no she didn't. So I'm still wondering, is she pleased with herself? I've kept her on my friends list out of curiosity about her life.

I can remember, once or twice being mean to a classmate/ friend at secondary school and although it was nothing too bad I do feel awful when I think back and would apologise in a heartbeat if I had the chance now.

Oddly, last week I saw a teenage friend of mine who dumped me completely unceremoniously for no reason that I can think of and I longed to go up and ask her why. That was 35 years ago so those teen traumas do stick and I had other pals.

So, YANBU I hope. Mainly people grow up and become nicer, more comfortable within themselves. I'm happy your life improved so much.

This is a perfectly timed thread for me. I had a FB message from a school bully the other day. She sent it a few weeks back, but I didn't notice it as we're not friends. Her daughter is being horribly bullied and it's made her think about how she was at school. It's quite an honest sounding message - she didn't think of herself as a bully at the time (name calling, lots of leaving out, laughing behind my back and covering for other people who did the same). She said that when she went home from school each night she never gave it another thought and it's only now that her daughter is suffering that she realised that I wouldn't have gone home from school and not given it another thought. She sounds genuinely disgusted with herself.

I'm not quite sure how to reply, or even if I should. I've encountered a few old bullies over the years, but for some reason her honesty seems to warrant a reply, but 'thank you' seems random and odd.