Dear Bullies
You have been many in my life, some of you have beaten me, sometimes because I was the smallest, and easy to pick on, other times because I was the one who couldn’t run away (because I had no breath to do so), many times for not supporting your football team — worse still, for not supporting any football team, quite a few times for being raised as a Catholic instead of Protestant, some because you gained pleasure from knowing that I was terrified of you.
Then again, some of you were more interested in bullying me emotionally by taunting me (knowing I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fight back), some of you because you bullied everyone, some just because it was something you did for fun, some because you, yourself, were bullied by others, some because I was the weird kid, some because of association with someone you weren’t able to bully directly.
Then, there were all the adults who bullied me as a child, the ones who assumed positions of power, the teachers who assaulted me with chalk dusters (thrown at my head from across the room), straps, rulers (causing swelling, bruising and bleeding of knuckles by being told to clench fist to maximise damage) and, most of all, the ‘tawse’, the authorised instrument of corporal punishment in Scotland, a thick piece of leather (split to cause maximum pain) you used to batter, bruise and cut Scotland’s children on a regular basis and, in one case (fortunately, not me), break the wrist of one child.
Next, there were those who told me how useless I was, how stupid I was, how I would never amount to anything, how everything I tried to do was a waste of time. There was the endless name-calling, the belittling, the humiliating and the bullying because other people bullied me, and you wanted your turn.
Then I entered the world of work, thinking I had survived school, thinking it was all over, only for it to keep on going, those of you who were little bullies became big bullies, and I was the ideal victim, being the gobby one, your younger versions having failed to beat it out of me. Eventually, I learned how to stop you in your tracks, and became the one person you avoided, and never attempted to argue with. I fought back with words, either verbally or with a pen.
I forgive all of you, regardless of what you did to me, why you did it or how old you were (or I was) when you did it. How else could you become something different? But I haven’t forgotten any of it. I remember every last detail. I would like to tell you that you only made me stronger, but it wouldn’t be true. You nearly killed me, and you left me to become a wreck of a human being.
I fixed myself. I am strong because of me, not you.
Many were not, and they will live with the misery of what you did to them. Some have already killed themselves. Others will go on to welcome death when it comes as the final release and end to the misery.
The biggest, and hardest, thing I have had to learn is how not to be you. I am fortunate enough to know what power lies in the nib of my pen. My hope is that I will only use it to heal myself and to be as positive as I can be to others around me, but be warned, I will also protect myself, family and friends from you.
Yours sincerely,
Fraser
Fraser
June 2023