Sunday, March 30, 2014

Karma Is A Fickle Mistress

I recently became Facebook pals with a guy I went to school with. Cool cat. Was one of the popular kids but never treated me like most the other popular kids did. However, he still at least semi keeps in touch with them through the Book of Face which struck against me the other day.
As I was looking through a list of the many likes he had on a post (still popular after all these years), I came across the name of one of my many bullies from the day. Now, many years ago I decided I was done caring about this people and what they had to say about me and with that came the honesty of saying that I was bullied. Not always an easy thing to say. I never said it through school and if my family reads this, it's probably the first they're hearing it. School was awful. I had friends literally tell me I wasn't cool enough to be friends with them anymore. I was called every name under the book for no apparent reason. I would fake sick at times just so I wouldn't have to face these people if only for a day. The worst part, though,m was likely basketball. I made the team all three years in junior high and made the JV team in high school. I was the very obvious, odd man out. I wasn't cool, just tall and loved the sport and the others couldn't get that. Every practice was filled with ridicule and torment. I was told by teammates and others alike that I didn't deserve to be there. Thankfully it was mostly all verbal throughout the years. There were some physical things as well but never anything to the degree of getting beat-up, just small hits and shoves and the likes.
So this name I came across on Book, he was there in jr high as part of all this and even after going to separate high schools, he and his friends were still throwing the word jabs when our schools played. For many years, I was just hoping that the myth called Karma would catch up to them all, especially him. So I clicked over to his page hoping to find a fat, balding man who was working on his third marriage. Instead I find a handsome, muscular, seemingly successful and happy man with an above average wife.
Of course.
I know it may make me look cruel, but I was a little hurt to see him doing so much better than myself. In one moment, I was sixteen again and wanting to curl up in bed, pretending to be sick. But I hope he is finally deserving of it all, I really do. As hard as it may be and as much as I still carry around all that hell I went through, I forgive him. I forgive them all. Whether they were products of other environments themselves or if they came to grow as people and changed their ways or if it's just that they don't deserve my attention in any capacity (this post kinds contradicts that though), I won't hold any hatred towards them. Their names may still cause me to shiver and they may be living better lives than I am but I won't regress myself to those levels.
I will, however, not be liking anything I see from them on Facebook.

2 comments:

  1. I went through something similar when I first joined Facebook, seeing all these people who treated me as less than human in high school, and now they all wanted to be friends with me. At first, I felt like if someone went through the trouble of adding me I had an obligation to confirm them. After a few months, though, I realized that I had no interest in knowing what they were up to and it didn't hurt them if they didn't know what I was up to, so I unfriended nearly everyone I went to high school with. I guess the bottom line is that you're smart enough to choose who you associate with, online or otherwise, and if you don't wanna associate with someone for whatever reason, you don't need to.

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  2. Well nobody has been banging my door for friendship yet so I probably won't have that problem. I guess I was just caught a little off guard with how small I felt by just seeing his name and some pictures. Fairly certain I won't ever have to directly deal with him again though so there's the silver lining.

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