A letter to my most constant bully
A few nights ago, I had another of my recurring nightmares: I was back to school. This time, however, it was different: the nightmare didn’t consist of me forgetting homework or not studying for a test. It consisted of me being bullied. I don’t remember how I was bullied in the nightmare, now the consequences of the bullying (probably, nothing happens to the bullies, like in real, awaken life), but I do remember who was bullying me: my most frequent middle and high school bully, M. When I woke up, I decided to write this letter, not for M to read, but for myself to soothe and help in my journey to recovery.
I met M in fourth grade. She entered in the middle of the school year and the teacher told her to sit behind me. During a long time, we were just two strangers sitting near each other in class — until we first talked. I registered the impressions of this talk in my diary. As a girl with few friends, I craved friendship, real friendship, something I hadn’t experienced and didn’t understand. I wrote in my diary that M was awesome, that she liked the same magazines that I did and collected the same things as me. I ended the diary entry saying that she would forever occupy a place in my heart.
Cut to the following year. I went to a new school, and M was there, too. We were all new students and little by little we organized in cliques, even though I wanted to be friends with everybody. For a while, her clique simply ignored me. But I couldn’t be ignored: I was first of the class in all subjects. I was envied. I was also hated.
Things started getting really bad in seventh grade. I remember once when the history teacher, a strict but brilliant teacher, told some students to redo an assignment and M was among them. When M gave her assignment to the teacher, it went with a message: “I know it won’t be perfect because only Letícia is perfect to you”. I remember the teacher asked her to step out of the class and had a long talk to her in the aisle. I’d love to know what he said then.
M and I clashed during a creative writing assignment and had other arguments — even on the telephone. She made my physical education classes miserable. Nevertheless, sometimes we did group projects together (I was often left without a group and had to be “inserted” in a group to be able to do the assignment), and M even went to my house a couple of times.
And when high school started, things only got even worse.
To be fair, the worst came only in the sophomore year of high school. In the junior year, M and I were in different classes. In the sophomore year, there was only a huge class with nearly 50 students. All my bullies were suddenly there: C, G, V… and M. From that time, I remember M talking about me with the other bullies in recess and giggling, and also when she mocked the fact that someone had stolen some notes from my notebook — a mystery that remains unsolved — and said that I was looking for my missing notes but should look for a better taste for clothes, too. For a good time, I was afraid M or the other bullies could write to “Esquadrão da Moda” — a TV show in which a person with bad tastes for clothes gets a complete makeover — and they would surprise me in my house with a complete TV crew.
High school ended, but the trauma didn’t. For years, I couldn’t pass near a group of teenagers without thinking that they would talk something mean about me. For years, whenever I heard someone giggling, I thought they were laughing about me. For years, I thought that there was something wrong about me.
But now things have changed. I’m a successful film critic. And I’m also a stalker. I decided to look for M on Instagram one day, and found out she is now blonde, a dentist, a mother… and a widow. She wasn’t thirty yet when her husband died from cancer. I tweeted about this fact, feeling revengeful, and ended my tweet with “Karma is a bitch”. I received a fire emoji from a friend, and another friend told me that seeking revenge and being happy for someone else’s misery is not cool. I agree with both.
Again, this is not a letter to M. It’s a letter about M — and about me. As I wrote before, the innocence lost to bullying is lost forever. I’m still healing, and I’m not yet the bigger person who is able to feel empathy for my former bully. I don’t think she’ll ever read this letter. I don’t really want her to read this letter. I don’t need to hear her asking for forgiveness. Maybe I’m not ready to forgive, as, you may have already realized, I’m not ready to forget. That teacher who gave M a lesson in the aisle once said that we can’t forget, because people without a past are people without a future. And, as long as I don’t forget, I write — for myself.
