Looks like I have something to be grateful to Facebook for: I found an old bully of mine. In 3rd Grade he made my life hell with his friends, and I was so happy when I left that school and transferred to a school that, although I had a rocky start there, I felt I had found a home for myself. However the memory of that bully never left me, and I sometimes wondered from time to time what happened to him. I do admit I was bitter up until a few years ago, still upset about what I went through. I even made him a character in a story I wrote once, changing his name a little, where he ended up killed because he was an evil vampire.
Now, I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed to know that I wanted to put all the hurt I felt into a weapon and get back at him through the power of writing. And at some point I realized that holding onto this hate wasn’t going to do me any favors. So I tried finding reasons to forgive him. After a bit of soul searching, I found one: I was molded into a writer of scary stories by many sources, first and foremost by an experience involving two staff members at a synagogue scaring the hell out of me after services one day when I was no older than six. But the torment I went through in the third grade–the teasing, the isolation, the one time a friend of his put glue in my hair and I didn’t notice until someone pointed the glue out to me–helped mold me as a writer and as a person. It wouldn’t be the last source to warp me, but it played its role.
And I emerged from that experience much stronger than I had been. I started writing, found I loved it, discovered I loved writing horror, learned how to scare people with some effectiveness, and started getting some of my work published. In addition, I began to feel an empathy not only for those who were bullied, but for those who’ve been hurt and discriminated against because they were a little different than others. It’s a part of me I cherish, because it makes me a better person.
I’m now over the hurt, even though I still don’t like it when certain aspects of that time are brought up (my immediate family probably knows what I’m talking about). I write a lot, I emphasize with people, and I try to treat everyone as kindly as possible. But I wanted to find this guy, if only to ask why, or to get a little closure or something. I had trouble finding him, particularly because I didn’t want to use social networking to find him.
But I got a Facebook page to spread the word on my writing. Lo and behold, I found him. I sent him a message. And I told him I forgive him for all the hurts, and I wish him happiness and success in life.
Now that I’ve sent the message, I feel a sense of peace. I feel like I’ve finally gotten something off my back, and now that it’s gone, it feels so great. I don’t know what’ll happen next though. Maybe he’ll read the message. Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll send something back. Maybe he’ll ask to be my friend. I don’t know. But I do know that he’s in California and I’m in Ohio, so the distance between us is enough that I feel comfortable enough to just see where this goes and not worry that he’ll show up and harass me or something.
In the end, I’ve closed a chapter of my life that deserves to stay closed. And now, I would like nothing more than to continue working on the short story I’ve been working on since this morning.
Happy Holidays, everybody.
Rami Ungar The Writer 