Bullies

I dreamed of a bully last night.

She didn't look like a bully, with her angelic blonde curls and big blue eyes. And all the grown-ups thought she was just swell. But from my earliest memories until the last time I saw her in adulthood, she was always a bully to me.

We had the misfortune of crossing paths in many aspects of our lives, affording her plenty of opportunity to cut me down. I can remember specific instances of having my fingers stomped, being pushed down, all the physical signs of bullying. As she got older she became more cunning, and would cut me with words at every opportunity. When we were elementary aged, she told her friends that they couldn't be friends with me, and they listened..."We'll hang out now, but when ___ gets here, we're going to have to go with her..." In middle school, she told me I couldn't sing with all the other girls in the class as we said goodbye to a classmate "because you haven't been at this school that long and don't know her as well as we do..." Never mind that the one student who came into the class AFTER me was allowed....

High school was a little better, but only in that we didn't run in the same circles. I was still reluctant to make friends with "her" friends, and I think anyone new coming into our class may not have known that was the lay of the land, and probably just thought me shy. _____ took in those she deemed "cool," and I was clearly not one of them. By this time I'd learned to ignore her shenanigans for the most part. And of course she was the sentimental type when it came to leaving high school--while I couldn't wait to leave it behind and get my life started, she was in tears over it and even "apologized" for "not making my life easy." As if that made her the bigger person.

In adulthood we've only crossed paths once or twice, and both those times she's looked at me as though I were emitting a foul odor. But I have a different perspective now. I'm no longer the mousy little girl with her nose in a book who couldn't stand up for herself. I'm well-educated, employed in a job I love, married to a man I adore and have a wonderful kid, who is the absolute opposite of my childhood bully. Tessa is a peacemaker, when she sees bullying happening, she calls a person out on it, and when friends argue, she tries to mend the fences. She isn't a bully-er, but neither does she allow herself to be bullied, the way I did.

I'm confidant now that if I crossed paths with that bully, I'd be able to hold my own. But in my dreams, I'm 8 years old again, and she's getting the better of me.