Dear Girls Who Picked On Me In Primary School,
You gave me my first experience of feeling stupid and small.
When you wouldn't let me sit with you, when you teased me because my teeth weren't straight, when you made fun of me when I didn't know the answer to a question....
I felt embarrassment for the first time.
You started me off on a life long journey of low self confidence, you contributed towards me hating school which I continued to do for the rest of my school days.
But you were just little children. Maybe you didn't know any better. Maybe you didn't mean to be so hurtful. Maybe I was hurtful too and I don't remember it.
I stood up to one of you....you pushed me over one day in front of a boy and made me so angry with embarrassment that I stood right up and shoved you backwards....I'll never forget that look of fear and shock on your face as I lunged at you.
You never bothered me again from that day on.....infact you tried to be nice to me.
I wish I'd learnt more from that experience, I wish I'd carried on standing up to bullies.....
Unfortunately, I didn't.
Dear Bullies In High School,
You were the "cool" crowd. The loud ones. Nobody wanted to go up against you, not even the teachers.
I was the new girl. I was quiet and shy, and I was different. I was from a different area and you held that against me.
You talked about me when I walked into the room, you sniggered loud enough to make sure I heard, you tried to embarrass me whenever you could.
Some of you just went along with the crowd, joined in with the laughing.....some of you took it further.
You called me names, you made it very clear that you didn't like me....you refused to let me sit with you even when the teacher tried to pair us up for assignments.
You made me sit there while you argued with the teacher in front of the whole class, yelling about how you absolutely were not going to sit with me.
You made me cry, in front of everybody. You quietened a bit when your friends said you were being cruel, but it didn't stop you from doing it again.
You glared at me every time I walked into class, you made me feel intimidated and scared.
I dreaded school every day because of you. I cried every night because of you. I hated everything about myself because of you and how you made me feel.
And I'll never understand why, 15 years later, you saw fit to add me as a "friend" on Facebook as though none of these things ever happened.
It makes it all that much worse to think that these things upset me so much that I still cry when I think about them, yet they meant so little in your life that you clearly don't even remember them.....that you think we are "friends".
Dear Bullies In The Blogging World,
Yes you....the ones who like to insist so loudly that you are not bullies, that you're just speaking the truth, just telling it like it is....it's time you grew up and started taking some responsibility for your childish behaviour.
Those of you who like to pick on people that you feel don't live up to your standards of a blogger.
Those of you who feel that you have the right to an opinion on who deserves to be a blogger, who deserves PR collaborations, who deserves page ranks and who doesn't.
Those of you who, despite the fact that you have never spoken a single word to me yourself, see fit to send private messages to others slating me....swearing about me and my friends, ripping us apart despite the fact that I have never even exchanged an online message with you.....you don't know me in any way, so why do you feel the need to involve yourself in these situations? What do you get out of it?
And those of you who see fit to leave anonymous comments on my blog.
Making nasty comments, preaching to me, stalking my posts (You kept my blog open for NINE hours one day last week while you searched through all of my posts, I assume you were checking the labelling.....how sad is your life?!).....
If you have something you'd like to say to me.....why don't you grow up and just say it without hiding behind the "Anonymous" option?
If you don't like someone or their blog, surely the solution is simple....don't read it!
What do you get out of publicly calling them out on things you don't like?
Hiding behind nasty anonymous comments?
Stalking their posts in the hopes of finding something to report them on?
What a miserable person you must be. What a sad little life you must lead.
I do pity you.....but I'm sick of you too.
I'm sick of all the bullies in life.
This weekend, after receiving a few nasty anonymous comments of late and then finding out exactly who was behind them thanks to Statcounter's IP address tracking option....and discovering it to be someone who is my "friend" on social media and who comments on my blog under their own name regularly, I have debated abandoning my blog altogether.
I've had a lifetime of bullies and I've lived with the emotional scars and the regret of not standing up for myself....
I sat crying about it, about feeling like that girl in high school all over again....with horrible little girls sniggering and talking behind my back....and It didn't seem worth it.
It seemed easier to walk away from blogging altogether.
But why should I?
After a lifetime of letting bullies win, should I really allow it to happen again?
I'm not that frightened, embarrassed little girl anymore.
So I'll carry on doing what I enjoy and hope that I'm right in thinking that there are more nice people out there than nasty....
But to those of you who think it's acceptable to spread your viciousness around, spread it somewhere else.
I know exactly who and what you are, and I have no time for you.
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