I am generally a very easygoing person. I like everyone, generally they like me back. If not, that’s fine, I hold no grudges, but I mean, their loss.
I’m mostly joking.
But if I don’t like you, then I have a reason. And it’s a good one, because I am queen of second chances. In fact, in my eighteen years of life, there are only two people who I can’t find a single redeeming quality in. A former teacher of mine, and a classmate who spent an unbelievable amount of his time trying (and to a great extent, succeeding) to make me miserable. Both of these ‘gentlemen’ suffer from severe superiority complexes, narcissism, and a lack of remorse for making the people around them feel poorly.
I had just met the aforementioned classmate. I’d heard negative things about him from other girls who warned me of his less than charming personality, but he was my boyfriend’s friend so I gave him a cautious chance. I found him a little immature, but other than that I thought he was a good enough guy.
He didn’t take his time in proving me wrong.
It started with a facebook message. He spun some tale about my boyfriend that was both false and hurtful. I asked him why he did it, and he replied “for the lulz.” He could have left it at that and I would have eventually gotten over it, I never would have liked him, but I wouldn’t have hated him like I do today, and likely will for the rest of my life. But that was just the beginning.
From there it was things whispered as I walked by. Every single day people would be approaching me daily with the latest thing that he had said about me, all mean exaggerations or blatant lies. The icing on the cake was having him constantly telling Chris that I was no good and that Chris should break up with me.
I am ashamed to admit just what this constant torment did to me. When I would talk to people I didn’t really know too well I would wonder if he had told them anything about me, I wondered if they believed him. Every time I’d talk to my boyfriend and there would be a silence, I was sure that it would soon be filled with him breaking up with me on account of the anti-Morgan propaganda his friend had spewed. People took his side over mine, they thought I didn’t have a reason to hate him, so I started quietly hating myself instead.
I went from being happy, social, and confidant into a mere shell of the person I had used to be. I stopped laughing nearly all together, I hated everything about myself from the inside out, I had little desire to be around people, and I honestly and truly believed that I was worthless.
Long story short, I was miserable.
In the end, I got over it. It wasn’t over night, and honestly some things still do bother me. Like the fact that I’ve long since blocked him on all social media, we go to different colleges, and I am still hearing about the things he says about me well over a year since his torment began. That really bothers me.
Luckily, I have come to realize that most everybody is going to deal with someone like him in their life. I’m lucky that I got it out of the way in high school, because honestly; I am better for it. If it ever happens again I have learned that it’s not my fault, that there are no fixing truly bad people, and letting it bother me will do nothing for the situation.
He taught me a huge lesson in cutting the poison out from my life. I tried so hard every single day to pretend that he wasn’t bothering me and that I was fine, I tried saving face by not making a big deal of it. In fact, no one was even aware that I was mildly upset by it for the first few months. But by letting him get away with it and keeping it bottled inside. I became an even easier target. I kept so much of what I was feeling to myself for one reason or another. And for months the only one who knew the majority of what was happening was my best friend, and even then I didn’t divulge everything.
Eventually it got to the point where I didn’t care how anyone else reacted, and I started speaking up about how awful he was being. I told all of my friends all of the terrible things that he had done. Getting that off of my chest made me feel a little better. But the good feelings only lasted for so long. Even though my friends knew, it didn’t change the fact that he was still tormenting me. Eventually it occurred to me to block him on social media, and again I felt better. James still spends an alarming amount of time talking about me, and that’s fine. In fact, just a few weeks ago a friend made me aware of something he tweeted about me. More than eight months since the last time I’ve even seen him. I’ve done everything that I can do to resolve the situation, but he won’t let it go. He seems to have some odd obsession with harassing me, and you know what? That’s fine and I won’t let it affect me anymore. I’ve cut that poison completely out of my life, even if I still seem to be a big part of his. And in the end I learned from it.
I learned to stick up for myself. I learned not to put up with people who think that it is OK to treat me poorly. And I learned that it’s fine to be a victim; it didn’t make me weak, and I shouldn’t have been embarrassed. More than anything else, I learned how important a support system is in this sort of situation. I had never been truly bullied before then it made me feel humiliated and alone. But I was only alone because I didn’t reach out, and when I did it was to the wrong person. It’s been over a year now and honestly it still gets to me at times, and while I’m not a violent person I would love to get in one good punch, but for the most part I don’t care anymore.
We’ll steal a line from T-Swift:
All you are is mean
And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life
And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean
As for him? I don’t wish him a bad life. I wish him a perfectly mediocre one. And I am counting on karma doing it’s job.
