Dear Bully, Take 4, the one I just sent

I am not sure how to respond to your note. It came out of the blue and raised some things I haven't wanted to think about for a very long time.

It also, coincidentally, came at a time when I am examining those things to see how they have affected my life. It's strange but true that a therapist and I have been working through my teenage years and that school bus for about six months now. We've actually talked about it off and on for the past four years but I have just been able to get around to wanting to work hard on it. He believes I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of years of being bullied. He believes it accounts for a lot of unhappiness in my life, including issues that are still very relevant today.

One of the things I need to get past this is to desensitize to it. I have not been able to go on field trips with any of my kids because I can't step on a school bus. I'm 45 years old and I'm afraid of yellow buses.

The sight of them has brought me to tears hundreds of times in my life, but it hasn't been until the past five years that I have been able to accept that the traumatic experiences of being bullied and -- worse -- being purposely pushed out of a group are at least in part to blame for the trouble I have relating to people.

I have not had a close friend my entire life, I guess I never felt worthy of it. I have a hard time being in groups of people for fear they will hate me, so I avoid going very many places. I have a terrible temper and though I do my best to stuff all the anger I feel deep inside, it comes out at many inopportune times and has terrorized my family, made me lose jobs and has in general just given me the reputation of being someone to fear. I have been a bully for much of my adult life, punishing anyone who disagrees with me or threatens me. I am not someone to fuck with. Which is probably the worst effect it has had on me -- making me a bully is truly the worst thing I can imagine happening, and yet in many circumstances I can see how I use that as a defense mechanism.

I am not telling you this to ask for sympathy or more apology. I really don't even want that. And I can't offer forgiveness, either. I just don't have that in me. You obviously know how you treated me was so far out of line that it has stayed with you your whole life, too.

What you can do to help, if you're at all inclined, is to help me put this to rest by simply getting past it. I have not been able to come up with many solid examples of things that happened to me. I remember a lot of gum in my hair and being thwacked on the head and being taunted in many ways. I think I remember the loneliness the most, just sitting there and trying to figure out what the hell I had done to deserve this. Then, at some point, I stopped asking why or what I had done and simply accepted the fact that I deserved the treatment, that I really was a piece of shit that no one could ever like and that it was so obvious that I never had to question why any more. That is how I see myself -- deserving to be disliked, something disgusting, something useless and smelly.

So why don't you tell me what you remember of it. Give me some specific examples, as many as you can. I need them for my PTSD therapy -- we'll use them to evoke the emotions I felt then as a way of desensitizing myself to them. I can get very very sad about it all, but I have put details out of my mind, I guess. I do know that on the few occasions I have to return to Beryl, I am afraid to drive by Lynn Hartling's house or where Suzy Pedersen used to live.

It's not really relevant to me why it happened. I don't really care. I just want to put it behind me and hope the next 25 years are nothing like the past.