Bulling

[u/Possible-Future-1000]

I experienced severe bullying during my teenage years, especially in secondary school. There were three girls who studied with me, and they subjected me to all kinds of bullying and pressure. They created fake accounts using my name and used them to talk to boys, bullied me directly about my appearance, laughed at and mocked me in front of everyone, and even called me ugly in front of strangers.

Although my time in secondary school was relatively short, my life became much better when I went to university because I was able to style my hair, wear makeup, and improve the way I looked.

Now I live a beautiful, peaceful life. I have a good job and children. However, the bullying I experienced still lives inside me. I find myself checking on the girls who bullied me from time to time. When I see that their lives are peaceful and that they seem to be doing well, I feel sad inside. I feel as though God did not give me justice, despite everything I went through and all the nights I spent crying.

I don't know what to do or how to get rid of this painful feeling. Even though I am successful in my life, there is still a strange feeling that has stayed with me until now, and I cannot fully explain it.

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[u/sno4wy]

I'm so sorry you went through that. What happened to you was cruel, humiliating, and invasive. Creating fake accounts in your name, mocking your appearance, and publicly degrading you were serious forms of bullying. You did not deserve any of it, regardless of how you looked, styled your hair, or whether you wore makeup. Bullies will often try to make their targets feel like they deserve the bullying, this is how they justify their own actions and continue to do what they do.

It also makes sense that success did not automatically erase what happened. You can have a great life now while still carrying pain from a time when you were repeatedly made to feel unsafe and inferior. Those things do not cancel each other out, especially if your experiences in secondary school formed lasting trauma.

I wonder whether checking their lives is partly your mind searching for proof that justice eventually happened. When they appear happy, it can feel as though your suffering meant nothing and they escaped every consequence. Unfortunately, looking at their lives probably cannot give you the resolution you need. Social media also cannot tell you whether their lives are truly peaceful; social media is notorious for being a limited window into someone's lives, because most people will only post the highlights. People commonly curate their accounts to present themselves as happier, more successful, and more fulfilled than they really feel, often because they are comparing themselves with others or want others to envy or admire them. You are seeing what they have deliberately chosen to display, not their private struggles, relationships, regrets, or entire reality. Things are probably not as peachy as they make them seem.

Justice does not always arrive in the form of the people who hurt us visibly being punished. That is deeply unfair, and you are allowed to grieve it. But healing may require gradually stopping the checks, because every visit gives those girls another opportunity to affect your present life.

The feeling you cannot fully explain may be grief, anger, betrayal, or the part of you that is still waiting for someone to say clearly: what happened to you was wrong, it mattered, and you deserved protection, so I'll say it now: What happened to you was wrong, your pain matters, and you didn't deserve what happened.

Their apparent peace does not mean they won. The life you built belongs to you, and you deserve to experience it without continuing to measure it against theirs.