Apology

Things sometimes transpire and intersect in ways that cut me to the quick.  Some folks may see them as isolated incidents that just happen, by coincidence, to converge at a certain time and place.  I don't buy that for a minute.  I believe God engineers these moments to get my pig-headed stubborn attention.  It's one of the ways He speaks to me.

You guessed it.  He spoke.

I found myself deep in a facebook conversation yesterday about a high school shooting in Ohio where a student walked in, opened fire, and ended three lives.  During the course of this conversation, I stated several times that while I absolutely do not condone what the shooter did and believe wholeheartedly that he should receive the maximum penalty for his actions, I do at least understand his motives.  His method was wrong, but his madness was real, a real I understand all too well.

He was bullied.

Then tonight, I had the opportunity to get caught up on one of my guilty pleasures, the television program Glee.  In this episode, a high school football player who had made it his life's pleasure to bully a gay student realizes later that he himself is gay, outed, and bullied right back.  Confused by his newly-admitted sexuality and unable to cope with a single week of being bullied even after he had picked on his own victim for months, he puts on his best Sunday suit and tries to hang himself.

Bullied.
 

And that's when I began to feel God take a sledgehammer to my heart.

I had been bullied in one form or manner all throughout school, most of it taking place without my parents or friends even knowing (I'm a superb actor).  Though there were some bright spots, most of my schooling before late high school were years I would really like to forget in large part due to how others treated me.  Even more damaging than those bleak years of school, however, were several years I had been bullied horribly by a neighbor as a young boy and later by someone who was supposed to be a trusted part of my family.  I won't talk about those experiences here as they're best suited for another time, but suffice it to say that they left me damaged, confused, scarred, and angry.  Very, very angry. 

I could easily have become that shooter.

I didn't, thank the Lord, but I did release my pent up emotions in another way: I became a bully myself.

The bullied had become the bully, and I never really thought about it until the convergence of that high school shooting in Ohio and the episode of Glee (which takes place, ironically, in Ohio).  I had bullied other kids as a way to mask my own pain and gain the upper hand for once.  If I couldn't escape the taunts and jeers of  the people that picked on me, I could at lest pick on the ones I perceived to be worse off than my own sorry state.

As part of my personal recovery, I have now come to realize a very important fact about human beings: hurt people hurt people.  I have, honestly, forgiven all those folks that bullied me over the years, but I've never said I'm sorry to the ones I dumped on.

Sledgehammer.

Thank you, God.  I needed that wake up call.

So, to all the folks I ever picked on as a response to my own hurt and insecurity, please accept this symbolic apology.  Many of you are now just faded images in my mind and I've long ago lost your names.  Some of you I remember very well indeed.  To all of you, I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Seriously.

To Bruce, the big bully in seventh grade who had to repeat his freshman year of high school several times before finally dropping out, I'm sorry for how I made you out to be such a Neanderthal when I moved on and you had to repeat ninth grade.  Looking back, I'm sure the deck was stacked against you socioeconomically and (with my knowledge as a teacher) you likely had some pretty big learning disabilities.

To Travis in middle school and Andrew in high school, I'm sorry for picking on you and calling you names.  I always thought of myself as "dumpy", and, well, in my eyes you were "dumpier".  You were easy targets for me and I know my words must have cut deeply.

To Tito, I'm sorry for making fat jokes at your expense.  That was totally unconscionable of me and completely hypocritical.  You were the only person in my classes fatter than me and it threw attention off my shape to poke fun at yours. 

To "Squamata", I'm sorry about how I laughed behind your back when you got on and off the bus because I thought you were ugly.  I had no idea what you were like on the inside because I didn't try to see it.  As an outcast myself from "bus culture", I had no right.  I don't even know your name.  So sorry.

To Muncie and Earl, I'm sorry for going off on you for being gay before any of us even really knew it.  It didn't matter what you were then, and I'm glad you're confident in who you are now in spite of so many of us giving you such a hard time.  I had been abused as a child by another male and let my disgust of that time bleed over onto what I thought you were.  It took a good gay friend in college to show me that we're all just humans that want to be loved.  Man, what a jerk I was.

To the "burned man of St. Ann", another nameless soul I'll never know, I am soooo sorry for pointing at you and laughing at you and mocking you in Walgreen's at Northwest Plaza.  You frightened me because you were so very, very different, and I covered my own fear with false bravado and jeers.  This has bothered me for years and I use you often as an object lesson with my students.  I wish you were still with us so I could make things right.

I know there were others, probably many, but these are people that stand out in my mind.  For those I can find, I will make it right.

Still, who was I? 

I was a bully. 

Hurt people hurt people.

  

If there's anything I can take away from my own experiences of being picked on and beaten down it's that I'll not stand for it anymore.  I'm not sure when that mental switch was thrown in my head, but I'll stand up for the underdog now every time.  I will go to my grave preaching to middle schoolers about how their words and actions hurt.  I will never bully again.

I just wish I had made that promise to you all those years ago.

Please accept my apology.