Have you forgiven your high school bullies?

Well i have to say i was both....i was bullied extremly bad by some in high school. BUT i also picked on a few. By picked on i mean i never threw things or things like that. But theres one girl whom was my friend yet at times i wasnt the nicest person to her petty school kid things not so much bulling but enough for me to feel bad now.She connected with me on fb and one of the first things i did was apologise to her. Yes i was a child but after growing up i felt so bad for my actions and she was so happy for me to say sorry. To me it was the right thing to do. But im sure if i had of been a bully bully she wouldnt have added me.

I was picked on at school. And TBH, I haven't thought of the people who did it for a few years until this thread. They're forgiven. It's part of growing up and I was odd, so my sharp corners rubbed against their sharp corners in a bad way. Not had friend requests from them - they probably wouldn't want to be my friend, we were very different people then and probably still are today.

I would hate to think of them eaten up with guilt for what they did - I would have liked it 10 years ago, but no. It's not worth it. I just hope if they do feel bad they invest in their own children so it doesn't create a cycle.

This is interesting as Im looking at moving back to an area I grew up in and am bound to come across people I went to school with. Ones who picked on me, ones I picked on, friends and people u just don't get on with.
So this topic has been on my mind :)

I would be polite I think but ask why do you want to "friend" me when you where far from friendly at school.

I will work in forgiving my bullies and hope those I picked on will forgive me.

I wasn't really bullied. But there was a lot of *****iness towards me, mainly from older girls.

I don't think about them often. I changed schools at 16 & moved away at 17, so on the rare occasion I see them, I generally ignore them. If for some reason we some how started a conversation I would be polite & ask how they've been & go from there.

I don't really hold grudges unless a person crossed me in a major way. There are maybe 3 people in my life that I won't accept on facebook & 2 of them have asked. They know very well where they stand. I have no interest in having a conversation with either of them no matter the circumstances. But those two were close friends at one point. So its harder when its a closer relationship. People you only saw at school & who were never big parts of your life are easy to forget about.

No..... I just can't!

Like you I struggled and I was depressed, I feared school I feared home (they would torment me by throwing rocks if they knew I was alone).

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words and actions are with me always.

Wow. I cann't believe how many people have been bullied. That's so sad. :(
I have never been bullied, nor have I bullied others. I had a couple of close friends in school who were bullied badly, and I would step in whenever I was around anyone I saw getting bullied, even if I didn't particularly like the victim myself. The saddest bit is that bullies tend to pick their victims well, being those people least able to stand up for themselves and most easily traumatized by the victimization. And a lot of them continue that pattern of behaviour into adulthood too.

I've forgiven some, but not others... Some of the ones that bullied me were going through hard times, like parents divorcing, new step parents coming on the scene, weren't doing so well at school etc, and I was seen as a teachers pet, my family was stable and I was probably an easy target because I was pretty passive.

The ones that tormented me though (mainly boys), for example one that came up behind me on the school oval one lunch time and pulled my pants down in front of the whole school, and a boy who stole a scalpel from the science lab and cut my hand with it (our teacher made him sit next to me because he was naughty!), I don't think I could forgive as easily. Not saying its not possible... The first boy had a very ill mother, she was dying of motor neurone disease or something similar at the time and his father had left them, but he was a really popular boy that I had nothing to do with, and what he did distressed me so much...

I guess it's a case by case thing, I'd like to think that they are ashamed of what they did, I'm harmless and was no threat to them, I stayed out of their way and mostly kept to myself at school! It can be horrible to relive that sort of stuff when you see them or they find you on Facebook and things like that...

It's interesting to see this post as I have been thinking this recently too. I was horribly bullied in primary school which dragged through to high school. Among other things, I was beaten, teased, they glued my school books together, broke my things, threw my school bag in the bin every other day, called me names that even today hurt to even hear - such as the word 'Heifer' - invited me to parties where they had planned to do cruel things to me but thankfully I always declined, even a teacher was in on it as it was a small school in a small community and they were all friends. It made my school grades go from doing the work of those 2 grades above me to slipping into the worst grades and never catching up as I had the bullying teacher for 3 years in a row.
My 20 yr reunion is coming up next year and I'm still unsure if I'll go. I have some amazing friends that I would love to catch up with, but who need a high school reunion for that, right? That way I don't need to see their smug little b*tchy faces again. Will I ever forgive them? No way. Some people are just mean little girls who grow up to be nasty, horrible women. In their case, they never grew up. 2 of them are extremely successful, to the point that I will never buy anything that one of them tries to sell based on what she's done to me in my life. Maybe it's not great to hold grudges but I know I'll never forgive them. If they contacted me via FB I would instantly block them.

It's interesting that this thread has popped up again. One of the main reason I was considering a private school for my DS for primary was because I was bullied in primary school myself at a public school. Logically I know it could happen anywhere at any grade. I am seriously considering changing DS's school at year 5 simply to avoid the sort of scum that bullied me at that time. We have decided on the local public school because it has a really good rep but I won't hesitate to change schools at the first hint of bullying. I have agreed with DH to reassess the situation based on how DS is going trying to remove my own personal history from the equation. I thought I had forgiven my bullies but I really don't think I have. I would be very happy to discover they were all unhappy losers in the most spiteful way :(. I don't like feeling like that but I'm not really sure how to forgive them now.

The best thing about getting married was getting to change my last name on Facebook. Obviously my real friends could still find me but people from high school who I didn't talk to then didn't try and add me as a friend.

I was severely bullied at school. I have no reason or want to contact or be contacted by the bullies. My school days are days that I wish were wiped from my memory, as there is very little I want to remember. Its taken me 10yrs to come to terms with my schooling environment, experience, and Im still working on it, daily.
To be honest I would just ignore the message if it were me. I dont want to go back into the past.

But I do worry about bullying in school next year for DD1, actually I worry about it still in day to day adult life.

I too like a previous poster, was contacted by a girl who never gave me the time of day regarding a school reunion. Why would I want to spend my time with someone who treated me like something stuck to her shoe at school? Ugh school, hate thinking about those years, lots of unpleasant memories.
Have I forgiven them, yeah, I guess so, we were all stupid back then and didn't really know better. When you know better, you do better. I also said things to people I regret.