When a Former Bully Sends You a Friend Request

Dig this: You have a weird, bad social experience as a child, grow to understand it, move on, but still occasionally have the perpetrator pop into your world, and all that comes to mind when you see them is, 'Go away! You're not allowed to be within two miles of me! Didn'tcha read the contract?'
And you're not angry or hurt, just...you enjoy pretending the bully fell off of our flat, flat Earth.






I've been enjoying myself recently, pouring a lot of commitment into a job I like, squeezing it of all the Christmas gift money one can, and sometimes I go grocery shopping with a friend and end up laughing the whole way through! I'm getting smiles out of the little things. 
In the middle of that, I decided just two or three days ago to check out my Facebook account. That's when I saw some notifications waiting and clicked to look, then said aloud, "Really?" in my most sincerely incredulous tone. I've talked to you before about how we're all equals with some hardships interspersed in our pasts and in our futures, and I kept that in mind when I blinked at a friend request from the chick who invited a bunch of girls over for a sleepover sixteen or seventeen years ago and [seemingly] impulsively decided to become very hostile toward me. I wish I could say it was provoked by superficial envy, like fighting over which one of us could date the cute boy band-er neither of us had ever met. If only it had been a debate about the Mrs. Pigglewiggle stories. In fact, it was a very brief surprise performance of I'm a Human Land Mine. The girl who'd invited a handful of neighborhood kids over and suggested that we bring our dolls chose to get in my face at one point, full of energy, claiming that my parents had never loved me, which came from so far out of the context of our previous group conversation that I remember the other girls responding at first with quiet confusion, an unwitting silent protest. It was a big WTF moment.
 I believe that in every family, there is at least one crappy person, even if they're a distant relative, ex-communicated or deceased, and my family has had a few jerks/losers, but my parents have never been such jerks. If little else in my life is consistent, I'll always have Mom and Dad's love and respect; nothing can undo that. 
So I was in this fourth grader's basement, sitting on the steps that lead upward to the kitchen (holding the doll I'd been recently obsessed with because she recorded sound with the press of a button and I loved hearing my own voice), and as I was being shouted at, I looked around at other girls' faces. The party's young hostess tried to get the others involved in the act, but.... meh...elementary school kids aren't generally angry. It was more important to giggle and dance and watch cartoons. I could rest assured that this diva's sudden, poorly planned onslaught was dying within seconds, like a deflating balloon. 
The weirdest part of the incident was the aftereffect. We didn't know what to do. There is no specific protocol for children to immediately understand an attack and handle it, so in the face of such maliciousness, we moved on and let it go unspoken. 
The next morning, we all trooped upstairs for pancakes. 
W. T. F. 

I had a very short walk home from the sleepover, and I spent it thinking about how I was going to tell my mother. I wasn't able to believe the girl when, out of nowhere, she shouted, "No one wanted you", as if my parents had raised me because they didn't love me. I remember saying to myself during the rant that her words made no sense. If my ma and pa somehow hadn't liked my chunky baby body or the cost of dance class photos in goofy costumes, I assume that they would've just avoided parenthood to begin with. Having to nag me to do my math homework regularly could probably put many an adult off the experience. 

Now, my mother was trained long ago in recognizing signs of childhood trauma and abuse for her work, so she taught me that my bully was possibly struggling with such an experience, taking it out on others. I don't know or deserve to know if that's true, but the thought makes sense. I appreciate Mom getting through to me about that, because empathy's so important. The chick who, in my limited point of view, came across as disturbingly emotionally unstable and downright untrustworthy right up through high school grew up in the same town as me and, over the years, undeniably evolved as a person. It really is great that she's come so far. 
But. 
She gave me another WTF moment with that friend request. I...She's someone I hold no bitterness toward, and why should I, when her speech at the party made about as much sense to me as someone spitting in their own food. On the rare occasion when I've seen her since the incident, I said hi and quickly found an excuse to walk away. I don't wish her any ill, but I do not want to see her or have to scroll past her FB updates. F**k that. It'd be way too weird.


hugs & kisses,

Shannon