“An Email From My School Bully” vs “The Taylor Swift Approach”
A few weeks ago, I started watching clips from one of Sarah Millican‘s shows. One clip was called ‘An Email From My School Bully’.
It was about a woman Sarah went to school with. This woman sent Sarah an email after seeing her on television.
She was sitting with her family one evening and her kids were impressed that mum had gone to school with a famous person.
And so she proceeded to write this email, hoping to open up a new line of communication with an old acquaintance.
Now, when I was a kid, I thought I might take the Taylor Swift approach.
That is, greeting your bullies in a graceful fashion as they happen to queue up for your autograph.
Now I realise that there’s more solace to be found in Millican’s reply.
‘Hello X. To be honest, I probably won’t reply more fully than this as I don’t remember you very favourably.’
That hits the spot.
The thing is, as much as I like to imagine an escape from my school years without so much as a few scratches and some relatable anecdotes, I know that I’ll probably never get over it.
But had you told me that then, I would have happily let myself be swallowed up by the shame and embarrassment of having been present during that biology class.
Sadly, many young adolescents do.
Whereas, I believed in a future where that part of my life would peel off the moment I turned eighteen.
Like a snake shedding its old skin, I would shed my past and walk away from it, unshackled.
Unfortunately, the day I left school wasn’t the transformational moment I had hoped for.
And not nearly as romantic.
Much like Millican’s sketch, there is no plain Jane superbrain moment where the glasses come off and suddenly everyone wants to shag you.
The people who bullied you become a blurry stain in your memory only to be replaced by another bully: you.
Because, instead of directing my anger towards the people who hurt me, I directed that anger towards myself.
Besides, I could never find it in me to hate those particular people. Usually, bullies become bullies because they are unhappy.
As far as I knew, their parents were divorced and they had a tendency towards aggressive behaviour, even going as far as making a scene in class once or twice.
As for the others, they were just going along with it to avoid becoming outcasts themselves.
This isn’t justification enough, of course. But it is important to put things into perspective.
Even so, I won’t be welcoming them with open arms anytime soon. And if I were to meet them again, I probably wouldn’t take the Taylor Swift approach.
But is it all bad?
Well, a lot of it is.
But as a result of my experience, I know something a lot of people don’t.
At least not to the same extent. And that’s the impact one’s words can have on a person.
To ostracise someone, for whatever reason, and in whatever way you do it, is cruel.
And all it does is create angry people. And that translates into things like depression, anxiety, addiction, and violence.
So, on the one hand, I’m worse off because of what happened. But on the other, I’m a more compassionate person than I would have been had it not happened.
But carrying on feeling angry about it doesn’t make up for the disrupted pathways in one’s brain.
Because if one can turn one’s pain into a strength instead of a weakness, one can help others instead of spreading it further.
In other words, I’m having a Taylor Swift moment.
