#WorthRevisit - Forgiving Your Childhood Bully

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Dear Middle School bully, I forgive you for the three years of torture you put me through. I realize now that you too had struggles and pains in your life and no one to help you sort them out in a healthy way.  My adult heart truly aches for what you must have been experiencing to spend so much energy and time making another person feel so horrible, scared and hopeless.  I wish you could have shared your problems with me, so that we could have been friends and sorted life out together, instead of choosing to be my enemy.  The most baffling thing for me especially back then, was I never knew, I still do not, what it was about me appointed me your target.  I can tell you that I spent many hours trying to decipher what it was, and many more hours trying to change whatever it was I would perceive it to be. 

You did not need social media to terrorize me. You did just fine with the telephone, passing notes and using other kids just as scared of you to get messages to me. So while we would like to blame social media, it certainly is not the cause, nor the evil here, but at the core is our inability as a society to admit we or our children are in trouble, hurting or most importantly need help.  Instead of blaming the victim for being bullied, sadly I cannot tell you how many adults said, “what did you do?” 

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All Rights Reserved 2015, Allison Gingras
cover image courtesy:  Pixabay.com PD

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