Yesterday I saw my school bully

[Rowenaravenclawsdiadem]

At a funeral, he was a nasty little arsehole at school. I took an overdose over the constant shit he gave me. I always imagined meeting him and being as cool as a cucumber and pretend i didn’t even know who he was.

I was a nervous wreck, I was sweating, shaking I felt sick. I’m 43 years old this happened when I was 15.

Now I’m out of there there are a thousand things I wish I had said. I feel like a fucking idiot.

Is it possible for school bullies to turn into nice and remorseful adults?

Now I’m out of there there are a thousand things I wish I had said. I feel like a fucking idiot

You did it and you survived it.

There are probably more people on here supporting you than there ever were on his squalid little petition thing.

Give yourself a hug and a

@wheresmymojo, I had shit going on at home. Plenty of it. But I didn't go and bully anyone else at school because of it

Instead, I was bullied at school BECAUSE of the shit that I had going on at home.

I don’t care if he had shit going on. I tried to kill myself over it.

I would be horrified if one of my children made another child want to die.

@Rowenaravenclawsdiadem - I'm so sorry this happened to you. It's an awful, hateful, unforgivable thing to do to someone else. I don't care if they were only children. It's impossible to comprehend that a person of any age would not be aware that they were doing something horribly cruel.

Your last sentence resonated with me. My childminder was approached by a parent of a girl in my DC's class (reception age), saying that her daughter was always wanting to play with DC but DC would never include her. I felt so mortified for that little girl, and was deeply upset that my own DC was doing this. Not that DC was ganging up with other people and deliberately excluding her: just saying 'no' every time she wanted the two of them to play.

I had conversations with DC, over the course of many weeks until I actually got through, as to how lousy it feels when someone does this. There were great opportunities on days when I heard 'X didn't want to play with me and I was sad', that I could sympathize with how awful that must have felt and then put across the message: 'this is how Y feels when you refuse to play with HER'. I also had a chat with the class teacher, who herself spoke to my DC and undertook to monitor the situation. (Incidentally, no one tried to 'make' DC do anything - just understand how sad this could make another person). DC is now playing happily with said child. Took a few weeks, but we got through.

Class teacher assures me DC is not a bully, which tends to fit with my own view (because what parent wants to see their beloved child in this way)? She said it was normal for that age. But I'm so glad we took it seriously, and that the other child's parent alerted us to the situation. I couldn't bear for my child to be either a victim or a bully, and excluding other children is widely recognized as bullying behaviour. And there is no way, if I have anything to do with it, that I'm going to let him grow up thinking this kind of behaviour is OK.

Why do some parents think 'My little Johnny can do no wrong and would never do a thing like this?' I can't comprehend it at all. It needs nipping in the bud and shutting down, fast.

Instead, I was bullied at school BECAUSE of the shit that I had going on at home.

This!

I was living with my grandparents because my parents were abusive, neglectful drug addicts. The main bully took great pleasure in pointing out that no-one liked me, not even my own parents.

I've seen two of them since I've been an adult. One I bumped into in a nightclub toilets and she, drunkenly, told her colleagues that I was an old school friend then pushed and pushed when I wouldn't agree that we'd "hung out". To be fair she was mortified and upset when she realised who I actually was (muddled me with someone else) when I pointed out that the day she and her friends watched and laughed when someone hit me with a schoolbag containing a brick wasn't "hanging out". She apologised profusely and has avoided me, red-faced, ever since.

Another tracked me down on FB to apologise. She was having counselling for issues during her childhood that she'd kept hidden. It started a bit genuinely, but then it became clear that the only reason she'd got in touch (with absolutely no regard for how I'd feel to have it all raked up) was so she could hear me forgive her. I was the unreasonable one when that didn't happen. She hasn't changed at all, she's now just full of 'woe is me' as well as being nasty.

I was never bullied as a child, but did have a horrific bully as an adult. I've always wondered what I should say when i eventually run into her (it will happen one day as we have mutual friends).

I'm just happy that her life has turned to shit.

Your school bully sounds similar to mine OP. He rang my house multiple times to encourage me to kill myself because he said everyone hated me (this was pre mobile phone days). When my mum eventually answered, he told her how much everyone hated me, which must have been even worse for her than it was for me.

I still see him sometimes and I don't think he feels any remorse at all. When our paths crossed in a bar in our mid twenties he threatened to beat up my husband.

I am also 43 and I remain completely baffled as to why he hated me so much. The only explanation he ever offered was that I was apparently ugly...

I was raped by an older boy in my school when I was 14. Saw him about 5 years after in a pub and freaked the f* out. Found out 2 years ago that he's now in prison for murder...might not have happened if they'd given him more than a suspended sentence for what he did to me

I have no sympathy for bullies no matter what they may be going through themselves. The effects of being bullied stay with you and can debilitating.

I know plenty of people who had shit childhoods and had so much to put up with, only to have vindictive nasty little shits add to their problems.

It’s not ever excusable and needs to be taken much more seriously!

wheresmymojo
I think you have to remember that they were children at the time....they quite possibly had stuff going on at home that made them act the way they did.

I think that you have to realise that most of the bullies did so with a smile on their face and with malice in their hearts.

Its been said many times on here but what these bullies put people through in school would have either seen them fired from jobs or put in prison. There is no excuse.

I’d struggle not to tell them what a cunt they are.

And I’d want to do it in front of people.

I had a girl try to bully me at school. She wasn’t very intelligent and had a chaotic home life. I see her on Facebook and she looks like she has a screw loose.

Mine actually approached me one day, she cane over to me and said ‘I’ve often thought about you, I made your life Hell at school and I think about it a lot.. I just wanted to apologise’
I think that took a lot, I reminded her she was just a teenager herself and thanked her for the apology. To be honest, she turned out remorseful and it ate away at her.. and that’s her karma.
Sometimes you have to say that hating someone is drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.. I hope you’ve found some sort of peace over the years and you’ve gone on to have a happy healthy life.. bullying is awful and can affect you for the rest of your life. Write him a letter, write everything you feel, then burn it!!! It’s very therapeutic xx

@Rowenaravenclawsdiadem I think you did the right thing. Acknowledging that you remember them or what they did is handing them a strange sort of power.

Have you had any counceling?

I had mandatory counselling after the overdose but nothing as an adult.

I didn’t realise the effect it had on my parents (the overdose) until I had dc of my own.

Now I am super sensitive to any of my dc being bullied. Dd has special needs and the thought of it makes me feel sick.

When I saw his face yesterday it didn’t matter how old I was or how old he is, I felt like a silly clumsy school girl again.

Mine asked me to be a fb friend. I sent her a message detailing the mental manipulation, gaslighting, scapegoating, and proper physical violence.

It opened the floodgates and she replied and was honest about how she had been. She was deeply sorry, we spoke and even met up. She hadn't been in a good place and i'd been the victim. She didn't excuse herself, and she did feel sorry.

We met several times and are now genuine fb friends. I guess I was lucky, but it really helped me move on. To hear that it was her, not me, from her own mouth. And that it was because she had envied me, made me reassess myself.

As a teacher, i see two different types of bullies. 1 is damaged, hurt and craving validity. The other is just an arsehole. Mine was the former and sorting it was healing for both of us. The other is just an arsehole.

OMG, you poor soul, my heart goes out to you, OP. You are not an idiot, you are a normal, empathic human being.

I was lucky enough to have a long Superdrug till queue to compose myself for meeting my school bully. She checked out all my stuff then I said, '[her name]?'. 'Yes,' she said, clearly trying to place the skinny goth in front of her.

'I'm [my name] and this is for me and all the people you bullied at school.' and I slapped her hard. I'd like to say I'm ashamed of myself, but I'm not. She beat up so many of us on a daily basis. She had it coming.

I see a lot of mine on fb sharing posts about bullying which is absolutely hilarious and I wish I had the balls to call them out in it.

A boy who gave me a bit of grief at school committed suicide this week and it’s made me so sad.

redhanger funny you should say that because I often see the mother of a renowned bully at my kids school sharing anti bullying things and saying 'I'd kill my kids if I found out they were bullies'. Yet when anyone tells her about their bullying she accuses them of lying and having a vendetta against her kids.

I have a friend who used to be a school bully. He didn't bully me directly as he was in the year below but he was a general shit to anyone and everyone. Years after school I bumped into him at a party. He said "you went to my school didn't you?" to which I replied yes. He then said "I am so so sorry for my behaviour at school. Whenever I see someone I recognise from school I hang my head in shame. I've completely changed who I am and I now teach kids like me how to free style rap". He's such a sweetheart now! ❤️

My school bullies were best friends and would openly call
Me racist names - think of the most nasty , vile , humiliating nameS you can think of and that's what myself and my sibling heard day after day - anytime they saw us , classroom, playground, lunch hall. This was mid 80,s and they were skinheads. One stopped the name calling after his mother committed suicide - he then saw me a year or so after leaving school when I was with new friends and told his friend he knew me and pretended we were good friends in school. The other is a vicar in middle Oxfordshire . Sometimes I wonder what made him to choose that path.

I do sometimes wonder what became of the girl who kept bullying me at school; she really did make my life a misery and I hated her at the time. I don't bear her any ill will anymore, because I found out a few months after I'd left that school that her mum had recently died of cancer. (She'd been ill for a few years.) I know she failed all her O Levels, so she was obviously badly affected by the loss of her mum.

I don't know how I'd feel now. I felt guilty for hating her for a while, but that passed and I felt sympathy for her. But I have no idea how I'd feel if I were to see her again.

Christmas I think I’m a bit in love with you. Well done.

One of mine tbh I had a few, school was miserable posts quite a bit of anti bullying stuff on facebook now. Oh, the hypocrisy!
I worked with another for a little while. We both pretended that it never happened and it was never brought up. While I forgive her for it, I was always weary of her.