An Open Letter To My College Bully

Believe it or not, you never truly apologised. That's okay, an apology would mean I'd have to let you back in.

You were filled with hatred for me as soon as we met. We maybe had one normal conversation in which you didn't put me down or try to humiliate me in two years. I don't think you knew me then. You sure don't know me now. I don’t know myself anymore either. I tried for a year afterwards to treat you as a friend. Some people can't keep a lid on their true colours; some people can't stop their darkness from beaming through a prism, to appear as a baleful rainbow of a sky clouded over with the isolation and misery they drive into others. I stood, sat, slept and lived under the iron blanket of doubt for too long.

I don't know what you thought you were doing. It was anything but playful, nothing you said was a joke, when I didn't take it as a joke it became my fault, rather than you holding yourself accountable. I'd go home and wonder what was wrong with me. I'd cry. I'd wonder if it was my weight, my looks, my behaviour. I am me. I can't pretend for the sake of someone who wants to use me as a psychological dartboard. And it's not my fault if you can't embrace who I am. You'd never change. Not even if it meant not requiring me to be a target, a thing to bend and break until it doesn't believe or feel that it can ever be whole again. But I always had to. Because I was me.

I really never saw you treat anyone else the same. I know you don't know how it feels to have a target painted on you every day for two years or you'd never subject someone else to it. So, so, so many times I just did not want to come to class. I'd wonder if there were ways other than taking drastic and highly regrettable action to just not go.

I don’t know why you gaslighted me and my close friend. I don’t know why people still think what you did was harmless, people who claim to care about me because what you did has negated the way I’m going to see myself forever. You have ruined my self image and the image that others have of me, and for that I don’t forgive you. I will never forgive you. And I’d like to also say I am sorry. I’m sorry you hurt me. I’m sorry you twisted me. I’m sorry I’ll never be the same because I’m still stuck wondering if I am being too sensitive or if my anger and misery at how you hurt me is justified. I’m sorry that my days and nights are much darker than they would have been if I had never met you, or even if you just decided that maybe I was worth human treatment, or at least the same treatment as everyone else, instead of being argued with, ranted about and humiliated over and over again. I’m sorry that you never had one nice word to say about me, despite how hard I tried to be someone you could love and cherish as a friend and a human race sister. I’m sorry that whatever you were going through then was my fault, or that you associated it closely enough with me to turn me into your verbal punchbag. I am sorriest, naturally, that your view of the world is so dark and twisted that it’s okay to you to do to me what you did and then try to drag me back into your hellshow circle for more of it, and it seems obvious that you had some anger to bring out on me so I hope that doing so helped you somehow. I told you that I wanted you and everyone on your side out of my life forever, and I meant it. If I’m childish for wanting people that hurt me out of my life, just so I can try to heal, then take me to a nursery because that makes me a baby. I will find the peace and happiness that you stole from me - soon.

You know who you are. And I definitely don’t need to tell you who I am.