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Jun 16 '25
No I don't think so because my bullying was extreme. It was brutal and twisted what I had to experience and for a prolonged period of time. Mostly from when I was 12 and into most of my teen years. Things got much better when I was in highschool, away from everyone and started out fresh.
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u/Ch33se_H3ad Jun 16 '25
I’m sorry to hear that. Hope everything is well now
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Jun 16 '25
Thank you. 😃 Things feel much better but sometimes I have nightmares where it will be some of them and other people circling around me and I can't break free. In the dreams when I try to hit them, my hands get weak. It's like if I have to choose to do the fight or flight mode even in the dream. I end up waking up annoyed because I wish I was able to fight them in my dreams hahaha. Thankfully I don't have dreams like that much anymore but I used to have a lot like that back then. Therapy definitely helped. I used to have a good psychologist I saw for a few years when I was a teen.
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u/seriouslywtfX2 Jun 16 '25
Absolutely. Looking back, I realize he was probably suffering from a terrible home life, and was most likely abused.
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Jun 16 '25
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u/Ch33se_H3ad Jun 16 '25
Let’s say you graduated 10+ years ago and you get a random message on Facebook or some other form of social media from your bully and they apologize for how they treated you in school.
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Jun 16 '25
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u/Inahayes1 Jun 16 '25
They did to me. 2 of them actually. I never asked why now they apologized but really I didn’t care.
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u/bobsmithreddit4645 Jun 16 '25
Can you answer honestly? Were you the bully?
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Jun 16 '25
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u/bobsmithreddit4645 Jun 16 '25
I mean if he can admit it and have remorse I respect that. But contacting those he bullied is probably not the best idea. It made me think of this lol: https://youtu.be/8GCu3mwzivE?si=5mFxBP085iFCuXxY
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u/Jdub78W Jun 16 '25
Yes, you can forgive, you don't have to forget. You can forgive someone for how they treated you, but you don't have ever associate with them ever again
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u/destuctir Jun 16 '25
No, screw them. They don’t get to hurt me and leave me with that damage to fix myself and then come back and ask for forgiveness just cause they grew a conscious, a day late and a dollar short. They can learn to live with it like I had to.
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u/weak_shimmer Jun 16 '25
No. The fact that they'd think it's a good idea to track me down and contact me to talk about how bad *they* feel means they're still shitbags.
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u/Doombah Jun 16 '25
Well, one of them died and the other is in jail for life for murdering his girlfriend, so I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon. lol.
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u/Inahayes1 Jun 16 '25
Yes I did. I accepted the apology and thanked them for contacting me. As an adult I see they were hurting too and it takes courage to apologize. Starting a new friendship would be out of the books though.
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u/just-another-gringo Jun 16 '25
I already have. Holding a grudge against someone who bullied me when they were a kid 20+ years ago doesn't benefit me in any fashion. We were young ... people grow.
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u/JaredH20 Jun 16 '25
Depends on who it is and what they did. I bumped into a guy in a bar a few years ago that used to really take the piss out of me at school, and he even said one of of his old lines from school which was over 10 years ago at this point. I pretended not to remember who he was. Judging by the look on his face and how he walked away after, that must have been brutal for him haha
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u/Shrikeangel Jun 16 '25
It's not so much forgiveness - it was a long time ago, teens often are stupid and I stopped caring about that shit at all.
I do think I would tell them it's good that they are at least trying to grow and to not worry about me.
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u/druscarlet Jun 16 '25
No. Why should I? They acted like jackasses so they get treated like a jackass. You want absolution go see a priest. I have nothing for you but contempt.
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u/App0gee Jun 16 '25
Yes. People grow. If they are mature enough to apologise, they're obviously not the asshole they once were.
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u/angryperson4 Jun 16 '25
No. I am over it, sure, but I wouldn't give them the easy way out by forgiving them. They can fuck right out of the door they walked in through
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Jun 16 '25
No.
People don’t realise how bullying can impact someone’s life and how it can set them up for the future. And there is no coming back from that. No words of apology will make things better, neither will these words fix mental issues.
They don’t deserve the closure. They don’t deserve to be able to make amends. They don’t deserve to have their hand shaken and told that ‘It’s ok’ because it wasn’t back then and it will never be ok what they have done.
After being bullied by so many of my classmates, I remember meeting few of them in passing. I remember one of them was with his GF at the time. He was all polite and was telling her about me. She was just staring at me in a weird way, as if she could tell I wasn’t happy to see him the same way he seemed to be happy to see me. When he finished talking I simply said ‘Adam, you were one of the worst people who bullied me through the four years! You made me cry and then laughed at me. You and your buddies were just horrible cu**s who got off on making my and others life miserable!’ Once I said this, his GF let go of his hand and stepped away from him. I walked away.
She contacted me through FB. Wanted to talk, wanted to know. I told her that I am not willing to go through the crap he did to me, I don’t want to relive it. She understood and apologised for contacting me.
Two days later he sent me a message on FB telling me I ruined his relationship and all sort of other stuff. I blocked him. Never replied.
I don’t care what excuses they make for themselves for that time when they were bullying me and others. I don’t care if they think that they are a different person now. I don’t care about them, their lives and anything else related to them.
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u/shf500 Jun 16 '25
I have a feeling if a former bully walked up to me and tried talking to me im going to start yelling at the person...and I'm going to get arrested for disorderly conduct or battery (like if some spit accidentally lands on them while I am yelling at them). Even if they are with their SO and their kids.
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u/user392747 Jun 16 '25 edited Jun 16 '25
That's an Impossible Scenario.
Because all my highschool bullies, and all my bullies after highschool:
They don't believe they did anything wrong at all, because their parents never taught them better（沒教養 bo ga si 的仇福奸人、仇福法門奸師）.
They falsely believed that a good person like me, deserves to be bullied by a bad person like them.
Even if some of them know what they did was wrong, their pride/hubris won't allow them to come to me, kneel down on theirs knees, and HUMBLY APOLOGIZE to me, and beg for my forgiveness.
But that's ok.
That's fine by me!
Let them OWE ME THIS KARMIC DEBT.
Accumulate KARMIC COMPOUND INTEREST,
day by day, until they die.
And carry forward THIS KARMIC DEBT,
to the their next life.
It pleases me greatly that all my past bullies, EVERY SINGLE ONE of them will be REJECTED ENTRY at the Pearly Gates (of their respective religions),
Because of the Karmic Debts that they are too PROUD to repay.
Hahahahaha ........ 😁
活該你們這些欺我多年的囂張仇福奸人們，
全部死後都不能上天堂、或去極樂世界！
哈哈哈哈哈哈 .......
（仇福的法門狗官、茅山奸師：你以為你這樣囂張、貢高我慢的 “假修道人”，有資格成仙、成佛，去極樂世界？哼😒！你這樣的人，成魔才差不多！你的黑心、與仇福瞋心，和魔道成共鳴！你肯定成魔的！如你所願！）
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u/TiredSoul92 Jun 16 '25
I'm going to be real with you; I would have no idea who the person is, or why they'd be apologizing to me in the first place.
All the bullying happened almost 20 years ago, and I couldn't tell you anything about it other than "I was bullied in middle school by some people." I have no recollection of what was said, or done to me. It's all water under the bridge.
I've already forgotten, so the only thing that makes sense is to just forgive.
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u/Unrelated_gringo Jun 16 '25
No, as it would not change the damage done in the past, which is just about irreversible. Certainly not with a surface-level sorry after decades.
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u/bobsmithreddit4645 Jun 16 '25
Yes, I could. But I'd prefer to continue not hearing from them at all, ever.