to not want to be reminded of school, but also to be a bit intrigued about where they are now...

[randomthoughts]

Back story, I pretty much hated every second of high school, bullies, bitchiness, not fitting in, wanting to be cool but knowing I never would be, not being pretty enough to get a boyfriend... I'm sure some of you here will empathise. Luckily I did see it through, quite successfully, went on to uni and now have a fairly successful job, husband, 2 kids, nice house, work life balance, all good!

I'm FB friends with a few people from school and have a couple of friends who I do keep in touch with in real life. Recently more photos from 25 years ago have been added, with numerous people tagged. It's brought all sorts of past feelings to the surface and I'm struggling to process them. I think there's still an urge there to be one of the 'cool kids' or knowing that the cool kids didn't do as well as I did may reinforce it all came good in the end.

I think I should just delete anyone from school apart from those I have spoken to this millennium, but human nature (I.e nosiness) has so far prevented me from doing that. Are my feelings normal? WWYD?

This is why I deleted all my school friends, I knew there were those that had been successful in work that would look down on me for not having the same success.

You'll forget they even existed after a couple of weeks. Just delete, it's better for everyone

Totally get it OP. I had a bad time in school - not really bullied, but never fitted in and was always the poor kid. I have a very different life as an adult, but seeing people from that time pop up on FB drags you back in a peculiar way. It's very easy to get a kick out of X who has gone bald, Y working in what appears to be a menial job and so on.... Not pleasant but it's human nature imo.

I thought I had entered some sort of weird MN parallel universe...until Greensleeves entered as the voice of reason and also compassion and understanding. The first two posts you received were unpleasant and, dare I say it, sounded rather like bullies themselves.

I think your reactions are totally normal, OP, although not sure that Fb will really provide the answers you are interested in. It’s often a shop window where your life looks perfect and doesn’t reflect reality.

You sound very similar to me!

I was bullied a little bit but completely didn't fit in. I hated high school and couldn't wait to leave to go to college. I was a geek and didn't have 'cool' interests.

I sometimes hope that the horrible people saw the error of their ways and somehow managed to turn their lives around for their own sake and the sake of everyone around them. Suspect, sadly, that many of them haven't. I have zero interest in actually knowing what happened to them. I don't live where I grew up so the chances of me ever seeing them are very remote.

I almost never think about any of it any more, but occasionally something triggers it and I wonder if I could have acted differently at the time, what I'd now do as a parent if my child was in that situation... that kind of thing.

The posters who said you're being unreasonable, probably haven't had a similar experience.

Some are dead. A couple are addicts. Most went on to live normal lives with kids jobs and a bit of travel. One total bitch at school was perfectly nice as a grown up. I only see one person from school.
Meh, I'm in my 50s. I'm over it.

Btw, op. I'm sorry you had a shit time too. My dd is about to enter high school and I am braced.

I think the detractors here, either had a pollyannaish existence or were school bullies themselves.

It has real long term consequences...

My bully sadly failed to get a senior position in my organisation.... (it was nothing to do with me telling HR when they mentioned in passing someone from my hometown was applying..... Karma is a bitch

You're no longer the bullied kid- Well done in your successes!

theForeigner I don’t think she sounds unpleasant . Did you miss the bit where she said “high school, bullies, bitchiness, not fitting in, wanting to be cool but knowing I never would be, not being pretty enough to get a boyfriend”?

If you have never suffered at the hands of bullies you either wouldn’t understand, or you are completely lacking in empathy. It isn’t revenge, but a kind of satisfaction at seeing the balance redressed.

DD was horribly bullied by a girl in year 10. I understand that this girl has also had a bit of a time of it. I’m not pleased, but hoping that she now understands what it was like being in DD’s shoes. SS is now in year 13, and the long term impact of the vicious and nasty psychological bullying is still making itself felt. Her self-confidence was shattered, and she suffers from anxiety for which she has to take medication – CBT not having worked for her.

“Oh come on. If you go through unpleasant shit during your childhood then it resonates throughout your life”

Exactly LaContessa

“if someone made your life a misery you would have to be a saint not to feel a twinge of satisfaction knowing you had made something of your life”

And this ^^

I think it does make you worry for your children too. There are some quite unpleasant girls in my daughter's class, fortunately there are also some lovely ones too. What I love about the school we chose for her is that it is incredibly diverse, and the mix of different cultures seems to bring about a much more pleasant and tolerant environment, fingers crossed this will continue throughout her school days.

I honestly could have written this post. I had an awful time at school. I am Facebook friends with some of the people that mocked me badly but none of the worst bullies. If I saw them today I'd still be upset.
However one of the offenders turned 40 recently so I wrote a polite note on his wall to wish him happy birthday. He actually replied with an apology that he realises now what his behaviour did to me. All these years later it had me sobbing because I felt like I'd been waiting for that for 25 years.
Don't delete them. Be the bigger person. Chances are they have also grown up a bit.
To the posters having a pop at you - they've obviously never been through it otherwise they wouldn't be such massive knobs.

I get it OP, I was a perfectly normal, pleasant child who was excluded by bitchy girls and called ugly by the boys (looking back at myself, I wasn’t at all). I’m pleased when I see these people are still living in their nowhere home town and I’ve been very successful. I’m a very strong individual now and happy in my life, but I’ll admit I felt a little gratified to see these people were all smoke and mirrors.

Another here who was hideously bullied from 6/7 years pretty much till I left school and it was particularly bad. I left to go to uni and moved away for good and no family in the area I’m from now so I rarely return.

Have friends from that time on my fb but I’ve been included in a 40th reunion and it’s in a naff pub with bloody karekoke and they’re putting up pics from school and talking about teachers attending. But for some reason I haven’t left the group I won’t be going despite wanting to meet up with actual friends there will be people there who i’d Rather just never see.

I’d untag myself from any pics you’d rather not be in and I certainly wouldn’t be wishing my bullies a happy birthday...he waited till he was 40 to apologise to you?...oh how very kind that was!! I think about that time rarely, and I refuse to let silly bullies affect my life now and make me a victim, I also don’t think I’m all that and they are in crap jobs as that’s just a bit sad - understand why you’d think that after being belittled though bullying is fecking so cruel and horrible.

Stay friends with your actual friends and stay away from the bullies unfriend them and get on with your life

I don't think that you are horrible. I always found the 'cool kids' quite funny. I think that may be because I went to an elite school and many of the girls were from very wealthy families and thought that they were quite cultured when they were actually very common (I grew up in Australia where all the white Australians, who are usually the wealthy ones due to family money, are pretty much a direct continuation of their lower middle class British ancestors-think fake tans, stick thin, dead straight hair, fluorescent shift dresses). It was funny in an ironic way.

I've always been very sentimental about my school days even though I didn't have a great experience there. I've always said I was bullied but looking back it was more a bit of piss taking, joking, not quite fitting in with the cool crowd you wanted to be in rather than out and out bullying (I'm not minimising it but I'm aware people had genuinely bad times at school with bullying and I know now as an adult mine wasn't that bad). I organised a school reunion and became friends on FB with quite a few school friends. I got chatting to one of my "bullies" one night and I told her how she'd made me feel at school. She was genuinely horrified and apologised so much. Knowing her as an adult I know it's just her personality. She's a sarcastic, takes no crap from anyone type but is really quite nice. At 14 it's hard to see this though.

I have an old school friend who used to work harder than anyone I knew and was bullied horribly for it at school. She now travels the world with her job and has a lot of fun, as a direct result of that hard work. I have no shame in admitting that I take a degree of satisfaction in knowing that her life is now much happier than the girls that I had to (sometimes physically) defend her from.

I empathise, I had a truly shit time at school. I don't have any of the people who bullied me on social media, although there are a few people I was at school with on FB - I don't really engage with them though. They added me rather than me searching them out.

I've been tempted to google the names of the bullies, of course, but really, there's no point. They aren't in my life any more, and making a comparison between how our various lives have panned out won't make me any happier, no matter what the results are. They just aren't anything to me now. I just hope they grew out of their vile behaviour.

I see these people as flotsam and jetsam - they're in the past, bobbing away behind us as we head forward. Let them float off on their own course, and you keep sailing on yours. And take them off your SM - that's a tool for you to keep in touch with people you like, and you don't owe them anything.

Being pleased about the bullies not making it as "big" as you did is obnoxious.

What a stupid comment. There is nothing obnoxious about it. I would call it karma.

I agree with Greensleeves, as someone who was horrendously bullied throughout Secondary school, I totally empathise with your feeling the way you do.

I avoid contact with/ or looking for, people from my old school, because, despite the passage of a great amount of time, the feelings of humiliation, hurt, embarrassment and inadequacy can all too easily take me back. I have found that several of the bullies have followed a path of self-destruction (heroin/ jail time etc), this didn't bring me any joy, although it did change the power they previously held over me. I felt pity for them, that their lives had downward spiralled and realised through hearing from other people that they were an unfortunate product of their environment and family dynamic. As a child, I was angry and hurt by their cruelty. As an adult, I feel sadness, sympathy and empathy for the children they were and the path of destruction they took.

There were bullies, however, who chose to bully me, as they felt superior in every way to myself. These were children who had every benefit that life could give them, rich parents, designer clothes, good looks, popular friends. They ridiculed me to make others laugh, to make themselves feel superior. I have found that they haven't changed much, they just became adults who bully other adults. Although some have had the decency to show shame when they have bumped into me as adults. I chose to pretend I had no idea who they were. As an adult, I know that I control how other people treat me, I can allow them to ridicule or humiliate me, or I can remove any power they have over me by treating them with the disdain they deserve.

Perhaps this is your way of regaining power from the people who bullied and humiliated you. I personally would restrict everyone from your friend list who is from your school years. Unless they are close friends and you see them regularly, unsubscribe from their posts, so you don't see any photos that are being posted on your newsfeed.

I don’t think it’s obnoxious to be glad the horrible kids didn’t quite do as much as you have? It’s only natural and it’s generally the way it goes. The nasty bullies don’t tend to be the clever kids and they tend to bully the clever kids who end up doing greater things and going to uni etc. I think it’s brilliant when you see that a bully is still working in the same menial job (or jobless) 20 years on. Or divorced etc etc. I generally like to see people do well but bullies I do enjoy seeing getting a bit of karma. As a disclaimer I’m not one of the clever kids that did well for myself btw. I was just average but still got bullied.

I was bullied in secondary school, it was horrendous and at times could have seriously harmed me (had a knife thrown at me, pushed out into the road in front of oncoming traffic after dark).

The two largely responsible are on my Facebook friends list, I was curious about their lives. But, I very rarely go Facebook as I really can't be arsed with social media. If I was on there all the time I think I'd delete them and most of the other people I went to school with, except for the ones I was genuinely friends with.

However one of the offenders turned 40 recently so I wrote a polite note on his wall to wish him happy birthday. He actually replied with an apology that he realises now what his behaviour did to me

That's nice. Pleased to hear that people can have this insight in later life

I had a terrible time at school. I was literally the only goth in the village and was mercilessly picked on.

A few years ago the worst bullies organised a reunion, they tried to make out how we were all such good chums and anything untoward that happened was years ago and should be forgotten about. Easy for them to say as they were dishing it out, not so much for those on the receiving end. Needless to say I did not go. I have a few people from school on my FB but they are people who I got on with and weren't complete shits. I don't speak to the rest of them. Some of them I wouldn't spit on if they were on fire.

If they are causing you to remember things you'd rather not then get rid OP. It's not worth it.

@greendale17

Karma would mean that they are reincarnated to a lower level, not that they are less successful later in the same life.

HTH