To quite enjoy this even though it won't paint me in a good light

[Explaintome]

I didn't have a particularly happy school life. I was, in the parlance of the day, "a boffin", had my little group of friends but we were the misfits without much in common except that we had no one else. I didn't keep in touch with any of them after school.

I enjoyed, but wasn't good at sport and was teased for wanting to try and called names for studying hard and behaving well.

Anyway, 30 odd years on (yes 30!) I am an accomplished professional and run for a club at a decent standard, for my age.

My biggest tormentor has started coming to parkrun, where I am very much a part of the community, know lots of people and am (I believe) popular among them. I usually finish in the top 5 or so women, then enjoy coffee and chat with friends for an hour or so afterwards.

Tormentor comes alone and is a much slower runner than me. Exactly the person who parkrun is for and who I would usually make an effort to include and support.

Bearing in mind what happened, a really long time ago, I quite enjoy her seeing me thriving. She may be thirving too, butnits not obvious at pr. I'm polite in that I say hello, but make no further effort.

Obviously I'm not over my school life or I wouldn't care. I've succeeded professionally in the end, but at least the first decade (possibly two) of my working life was marred by three feeling that I would never be liked/respected/included, that in part came from how she and people like her treated me at school.

Am I really awful?

It's not unusual at all I still live in the town i grew up in. A lot of people i was at school with do as well. Some went away to uni worked away for a few years. Decided they wanted to come back to they're home town.

I don't understand posters who say "but the bully was only a child" you should embrace your ex bully with open arms blah, blah.

I can only assume people who say such things we're not only not bullied, but probably bullies themselves.

I was bullied at school and 30 years later I still wouldn't want to say hello someone who bullied me back then. Bullies, although children, can make others lives completely, utterly miserable. They can affect peoples self esteem for years.

From what you've posted OP, you have kept your feelings to yourself in RL. You are not a bad person.You're a person who has worked hard to achieve what you have, and haven't forgotten the pain of being treated badly for no reason all those years ago. I'd try to forgive this bully, but I wouldn't forget and I certainly wouldn't want to be friendly with them unless they offered an apology for their vile behaviour.

I live a mile from where I was born and grew up and I know of at least 20 people from my year group (of 90) who still live very local. Some have done well for themselves and others may just get by but I find it confusing that you think it's unusual to stay where you grew up.

Don't forget a lot of people grow up realising they were *** at school and regret it.

Maybe they have changed. A lot of people aren't proud of their teenage selfs.

Yes I volunteer regularly at parkrun and I shout the same encouragement to her as I do everyone else.

Glad you are feeling good and have found a passion for running. In her shoes however, I wouldn’t care really as to whether you were faster and met friends afterwards. I am slow at Parkrun and literally only care about bettering my own time. I wouldn’t have time to meet Parkrun people afterwards, I want to get home and get on and have plenty of friends already. I do think focussing on your own achievements and feeling proud is great, but am not sure your nemesis will be reacting how you think she will.

don't think it makes me better than her, for all I know she's running some mutli million pound business and a children's charity. I think it makes me better than the person she made me think I could be.

This resonates with me. Be proud of what you have achieved and brush away those lingering feelings of self doubt and poor self worth. Smile and wave and move on.

Well I may be missing the point of this thread, as someone who has run many parkruns but is still very slow, I like to go there, do my 5km and go home again.

I have no desire or need to be part of the crowd that go for coffee afterwards, nor do I particularly want members of a running club or the parkrun organisers to make a special point of talking to me. Therefore provided you're treating her the same as others when they cross the finish line, then there appears to be no issue.

ParkRun is very competitive for many who go. My son is a regular PRner (doing short 18s at moment) and is very competitive about it & so are the others he is closest to finishing with. He's scheming about trying to get course records on junior PRns, will look them up all over UK to find ones he could get. It is not a jolly fun run for them. Everyone's results are available on public websites. You can ignore all that if you want, but it's certainly there.

Glad to plod (running) on my own but Last flipping thing I want is my name published regularly next to how specifically slow I am. I also hate being cheered at, it's perfunctory when you're 10th last. PRn doesn't suit some of us.

About OP's private thoughts: holding grudges isn't healthy for the grudge-holder.

She's a slower runner than op. Bad things haven't happened to her. Nor has she witnessed op "thriving", as op has said, rather oddly.

You're only human.

It does seem slightly pathetic though.

I clicked on this thread being all ready to support you, but the tone of your OP gave me the ick.

Just go ahead and say it with ya whole chest - she's fat and unfit and you're not. You're projecting on her, that that means that she's got a horrible life and you don't.

You're still insecure af otherwise you wouldn't be looking to your old schoolmate for external validation. You wouldn't be so obsessed with 'showing her' how 'well' you're doing.

She's not only living in your head rent free,she's got a two car garage and a big garden too.

i doubt she's thinking about you as much as you're thinking about her.

“say it with ya whole chest -“

What a peculiar expression.

Oh and adults who have bullied other children tend to feel a bit guilty for the way they behaved as well they should. They probably expect to be forgiven or the behaviour to have been forgotten.

You sound very defensive. Why?

Bullies do damage so naturally the victim/s find it hard to get rid of the memories. You’re blaming a victim instead of laying the blame squarely with the bully. I find that surprising. It goes against normal expectations.

No in this instance they haven’t, I was more responding to others who said they wouldn’t gloat if actual bad things happened to their bully. I would ¯\(ツ)/¯

What I find a bit sad is that something you do, park run, that is wholly positive for you is now associated with enjoyment fact that you’re better than your school bully.

So even though she’s not bullying anymore - you’re thinking about her, starting a thread on it, discussing her/it.

if I were you, I’d be making a conscious effort to give her zero thought. Zero.

If this is aimed at me: I think it's quite pathetic when people are still bothered by an event in their childhood but do not take the responsibility for their own mental and emotional health, to address it.

When I first went through drug and alcohol recovery I did the 12 steps and as part of step 9 revisited everyone I had harmed in my life to fess up and apologise. One of those was a BFF turned enemy from high school. We ended up having the most cathartic emotional conversation. We are now friends again. It was beautiful.

My point is, as Shakespeare (or Tolstoy? someone like that) said, 'What's gone and what's past help should be past grief'. Either OP lets go of her past trauma or she addresses it like an adult. This could be through therapy, a support group, meditation, self-reflection, or even tlaking to the former bully.

What OP is doing now is projecting her insides onto Bully's outsides. Imagining that Bully must have a dreadful life because Bully is a slow runner and (unsiad but between the lines) fatter and less fit than OP. And OP is getting a bitter, thin gruel of schadenfreude out of that. What a bitter little trickle of hateful emotion to feel over something as life affirming as running. It does not speak of a healthy, mature, emotionally rounded person, but of someone who is insecure af.

For all her knows Bully is living her best life. As well as living rent free in OP's head.

So....I was all ready to support OP, but no her post comes off as bitter, projecting as hell, and wasting her emotions. She should address her issues first and worry about Bully later, because Bully surely doesn't seem worried about her.

Our emotions are OUR responsbility, no one elses.

I won't address your follow on post as I don't believe it was aimed at me.

It's not pathetic in the slightest.

A lot of people on here are totally missing the point. OP hasn't voiced this apart from on here, she is proud that she's achieved things that school bullies told her she never would. If it were me, I'd have clothes lined the bully as I lapped her!

Thing is, she won’t care. She won’t care how well you can run or that you appear friendly with others, she had a huge, negative impact on your life, but you didn’t have an impact on hers, so it’s highly unlikely she thinks of you at all. I don’t mean that to sound harsh, it’s just that by giving it headspace (feeling a little smug, writing this thread and thinking about it all), she’s still taking up way more of your time than she deserves, for no gain. You sound like you’ve got a lovely life that you enjoy, and this lady doesn’t need to have a place in it, so I’d try and banish her from your thoughts and concentrate on all the good things you’ve got going on.

Is it possible you are projecting your own experiences and behaviors on to this thread?

Definitely. But, isn't that the case for everyone who gets involved in any of these threads? Whether it's about relationships, children, family, etc etc....people always see things through the lens of their own experiences and come at it from that angle, don't they?

Empathy is all about working to understand someone else’s feelings and perspective.

Not reading more into their words than they’ve written and lambasting them with it because of how it makes us feel.

Erm thanks for your patronising #bekind homilies, but OP wrote a humble braggy post in which she projected about her former bully's life on literally no evidence ("Bearing in mind what happened, a really long time ago, I quite enjoy her seeing me thriving. She may be thirving too, butnits not obvious at pr." [sic]) and then proceeded to ask MN if she was 'really awful'. I think it was a pretty wretched post for someone allegedly thriving, mithering on about her high school experiences, two decades out from high school, so I said so.

Lots of people give lots of opinions on MN, including on this thread. Not all of them centre empathy and thank goodness for that - it'd be a much less lively site.

Given all that, not sure why you've picked my post out. Could it be that you're projecting your own feelings and insecurities onto my posts?

Ok, keep preaching at people then.