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?

If by 'preaching', you mean 'posting my thoughts, perspectives and experiences on a forum like hundreds of other women are currently doing', then yeah, of course I'm gonna keep doing it.

And you can carry on doing your Sunday School teacher "in this class, we show EMPATHY!" schtick too, if you like.

LOL. touché

Do you not at least wonder why he took his own life?

You do not have to ever be friends with someone who treated you like this, but be mindful of the fact that as you are a very different person from what you were 30 years ago, so is she. You are both unrecognisable from the people you were back then and highly likely she looks at you and feels like a right asshole now

So feeling gloaty, although entirely natural, I think is perhaps something that could be overcome with looking at things from another perspective

I have to be honest here - and I am not proud or anything, BUT - I could have been nicer to some people at school.

As a kid, my home life was violent, chaotic, never had lunch money so stole food, often was locked out of the house or when I was allowed in, went in to an empty house and was eventually kicked out age age 14 at which point my choices were to be homeless or live with a peado.

I am not telling you this to make you feel any way about my situation - other than realise that you were probably not the only person who was going through something.

Teenagers who bully, may well be living a life far worse than any horrors they put their victim through.

However some teenagers are just assholes for the sake of it

I am not sure that feeling gloaty about someone who is trying to improve themselves, is the way forwards. I do not know what is the way forwards though