An Open Letter to My Past Bullier by Ally MacDonald

An Open Letter to my Past Bullier by Ally MacDonald

You changed me, changed me for the better. In 7th grade your words kicked me to the ground

to the point where I didnt want to ever get back up. You made my year a real life nightmare.

I thought your descriptions of me, my abilities, my talents, my family, even my personality

were what everyone viewed me as. You seemed like the 7th grade king, where your views

were what everyone followed and cherished. Thank you for making me feel like the oddball of

our grade, the one that no one liked, and the one who spent her time alone in her bedroom.

Thank you for showing me what bullying really was.

In 7th grade I was the misfit of my friend group. I had friends, but to you not good friends,

not friends who cared for me as I cared for them. I was the kid who focused on school more

and more everyday because you told me I was dumb and stupid. I was eventually the kid who

stayed home on the Friday nights and weekends because I didn 't believe anyone liked me. I

was the kid who almost changed who I was because of someone who is now a distant memory.

As you said many times, “No one will ever stick up for you, I could do this all day long and

everyone around will just sit here and watch” . This is what stuck with me all these years. I

can hear you saying those words over and over in my head even now, 5 years later. It wasn 't

the names you called me and my family or what you told me I could or would ever achieve in

my life, but rather that no one else cared to stop you.

Looking back I shouldnt remember any of this, or rather I shouldn 't care about any of it. I' m

happy now, I' m happy with where I' m headed and what I' ve achieved. I have the best group of

friends and support I could ever ask for, and this is all thanks to you.

let me tell you about him. His essay Civil Disobedience is all about following your conscience,

and that is the biggest takeaway from what you taught me in 7th grade. All my conscience

told me that year was not to change, not to care, and not to say things back to you but at the

time it was hard not too. Even without knowing it then, I followed what Henry David Thoreau

says, to follow your conscience by not adding to the problem. I stood by not changing myself,

but also not sticking up for myself. I' m proud that I didn 't stoop to your level or change myself

but sometimes I wish I hadn 't.

I don 't mean I wish I would have changed myself to make you stop, but instead I wish I hadn 't

followed what Thoreau says about not adding to the problem, and to follow your conscience

but not take action on your beliefs. I didn 't stand up for myself and neither did anyone else.

Maybe everyone else agrees with Thoreau about staying quiet and not adding to a problem

but I completely disagree. If someone had added fuel to the fire, you would have been out of

fuel. you would have been shocked if someone stood up for me, I don 't think you would have

known what to say back.

When It comes to bullying, following your conscience can not be done without acting on your

belief. Following Thoreau ' s idea on not adding to a problem makes people a bystander of

bullying. Everyone around me was a bystander. Looking back, I' m sure 90% of people watching

you talk to me didn 't agree with what you were saying. Maybe some people did, clearly you

did, but I think people wanted to jump in. People wanted to tell you to stop, or wanted to say

to me that none of it was true and that you were acting ridiculous, but they were afraid of

you and it pushed them to not follow their conscience.