The Bully

(This post might end up being one of my least fully formed posts, but I’m done editing it.)

Somewhere around 1977, my family moved from a housing development into a house with a half-acre of land and lots of woods around it. I was about 8 years old at the time. The new house wasn’t quite secluded. We could easily see our neighbors, but our backyard was woods. A short walk through those woods led to fields, and then to lots more woods.

Looking back, this move wasn’t the best thing for me.

At our original house, I had a good core group of friends and a best friend. Although our new house was only five or six miles away, to an eight-year-old, it felt like hundreds of miles.

And unfortunately, the move brought someone we’ll call The Bully into my life. They were maybe two or three years older than me and lived less than half a mile away.

Let me start by saying that I don’t actually remember The Bully ever making good on their threats or physically harming me. But that didn’t really matter. I was away from my core group of friends, and I had this person in my life with no backup.

My most common memory of The Bully is on the school bus. They would sit in the seat in front of me, turn toward me, and hold one hand over their fist, as if trying to hide it. They intimidated me into saying what they wanted.

I also remember them coming to a barn one day where I used to play with my sister and some friends. I don’t recall anything specific happening that day, but I remember not feeling comfortable. This one is more of a sense memory.

I remember a very specific situation at a local pool. They had some friends there, and so did I. One of their friends held a friend of mine and threatened to pour a pail of water over his head if I didn’t say what they wanted me to say. I remember just walking away and leaving my friend there. I don’t think they actually poured the water. But I do remember feeling ashamed that I had left my friend alone.

Things lessened when The Bully moved up to middle school, but they didn’t really stop. I can remember one day when they yelled something at me from their school bus, and I gave them the finger.

Somehow, my dad found out about all of this, and he arranged for the four of us (my dad, me, The Bully, and one of their parents) to sit down and talk at The Bully’s house. The only thing I really remember from that conversation is The Bully bringing up that I flipped them off.

We eventually agreed to leave each other alone, and I don’t remember The Bully bothering me after that, but the damage was already done.

Bullying doesn’t just go away. It is still with me to this day.

By the time I reached middle school, The Bully was already gone, but this is where people picked on me for having “big ears.” It wasn’t nearly as bad as what I had experienced before, but it still wasn’t fun.

Looking back, I can clearly see that this period of my life profoundly shaped who I became.

And not all of it was negative.

I’m sure you can imagine some of the negative impacts. Difficulty with social interactions. Difficulty creating friendships. Becoming an introvert. Not allowing people to get too close. Poor self-esteem. Anxiety.

I’ve overcome many of these things over the years, but I can still see their quiet impacts on me today.

That said, there was another side to it. This is part of what shaped me into a sensitive, empathetic, and emotional person. I cherish those parts of myself. They are important to me.

Maybe that’s one of the strange things about looking back at difficult parts of your life. You can recognize the damage they caused without wishing away the person you became because of them.

The Bully is part of my story, but The Bully doesn’t get to define my whole story.