An ill wind

An ill wind blew into my email box. It was in the form of an apology from someone I haven't thought about for 30 years.

Subject: Yes, this is from your former bully

This is the apology I have owed you for many, many years. And it is sincere. I have thought of you more than any single person I went to school with. Mostly, because of my horrible behaviour towards you. I hope you are absolutely sucessful and happy. You were one very tough little girl who put up with a whole lot of bullshit from me and others on that godforsaken bus from hell. I hope you are doing well and are happy. You deserve a life of happiness for just surviving my attitude and abuse alone.
Good luck to you and your family.

She can kiss my ass.

It came 27 days ago, and not one day has gone by since then that I haven't wept about this. It validates my worst nightmare, it embarrasses me. And it frightens me. I am afraid of this.

It started in seventh grade. We lived 30 miles from town, and that meant a 45 minute bus ride every day, each way. From frigid early mornings to blizzards, we rode that bus. For me, each minute was torture. I was never comfortable. I could sleep or do homework, but I could never relax. I was hyper vigilant. I was ready to be tormented, and I vowed that no one would Ever. See. Me. Cry.

I have a hard time remembering what I went through. I know it was traumatic because I start shaking when I think about it. Tears well up in my eyes, all those tears I never shed as I sat on that bus, day after day, alone and lonely, listening to them make up taunts to toss my way.

No one ever sat by me. No one talked to me. No one dared like me. By some combination of factors, I became the pariah on that bus, and the target of all the bullying. Like the magnet or the scapegoat, I was the one who took it. I ignored it, I blocked it out, I pretended I didn't hear.

I heard every word.

Smarter than average, a better student than any of them, I thought myself above them and below them at the same time. Better than them? Certainly. I had much more going for me in every way -- opportunity, initiative, brains, intuition, drive. Abilities. Dreams. If asked, I would have told you I felt sorry for the rest of them, primarily the offspring of dirt poor desert dwellers who lived way out in nowhere for various reasons, all of which boiled down to: Couldn't make it in real society. Couldn't survive in town. Needed to be isolated on farms with the closest neighbors five miles away. Liked it that way. Survivalists and white trash. No one lived there by choice, it was usually a result of fate or a mistake or a disaster.

My family was there because of fate. A disaster. A gigantic mistake, in my young girl's opinion. I hated it there from the day we arrived and fled in the days after high school ended. I like to visit now, but only when I'm driving my own reliable car or if I have an airplane ticket out of there. I don't think I could survive there; I know I wouldn't make my children live there.

I haven't answered my former bully. I'm not sure what she wants. Forgiveness? Absolution? I imagine she's in a 12-step program or has found religion. I don't know why she searched Classmates.com to track me down. I am not sure I care.

I'm consumed with curiosity. I want to ask her to detail the bullying for me. I want her to describe what it is she's talking about. To be honest, I can't remember what she looked like except that I have this vision of lots of dark hair and a big, bulky girl. A sneer.

I think of two others as my primary bullies, and have a visceral reaction when I go near where they grew up. I drive miles out of my way to avoid their parents' homes, even though one girls' parents are dead and the others have long moved away.

But this one. This one, a little younger than the others. They were a few years ahead of me in school and so graduated and left me alone for a few blessed years. This one is a year older than me, which means she was with me until my senior year of high school.

And yet I can't see her face, I can't remember a single thing she did to me. I can't remember why she thinks she owes me a "sincere" apology.

Have I blocked her from my memory? There are other holes in my memories that make me nervous -- like the fact that I can't name my second grade teacher and can't get a minds-eye view of the classroom I was in. I have every other year of grade school firmly in my mind, including kindergarten, first grade and third. But second is missing somewhere.

I haven't examined any of this too deeply, and it's time. My therapist thinks I suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the bullying I endured on that school bus. I minimize the events when I talk about them to him -- which is rarely -- and yet he still thinks it is of major significance. I have asked him to help me work through it, and we started last week.

One of my assignments is to figure out what I'd like to say to this bully. Do I blast her with my intellect and crush her insignificance? Do I lay out for her the struggles I've had with self-esteem, with trust, with a deep and overwhelming sense that I simply don't belong -- anywhere. Do I tell her to kiss my ass? Give her what she wants? Tell her I hope none of her children ever has to endure anything like I endured at her hands?

There's a spectrum of responses. Do I ask her what made her torment me? What was wrong with her life that made her such a bully? Do I give a shit? Does it matter? Does it change my response? Is there anything she could say that would make me feel differently?

She can kiss my ass.