A Letter to My Childhood Bully and Why I Forgive You
We have all been bullied. Whether it be a stranger or a toxic friend, online or towards yourself, being bullied sucks. My childhood bully wasn’t even trauma-inducing. I did not awake scared to go to school. Instead, I wondered why he would bully me for something that we both shared?
I have definitely blocked out most of my years as a child who stutters. I was a quiet kid, in part because I was shy, but also for my stutter. The less I said, the better. However, outside, I was pretty lively. I had a group of friends. Dare I say popular? I didn’t advertise that I had a stutter unless someone teased me, but if people at school knew, they never poked too much fun at me for it, except for Sylvester.
While I don’t have an exact moment, I think a notable one would take place in 1st grade. I was directed to leave class. I hate to miss class so I begrudgingly left to be placed in a dark room across the playground with a few other students I knew. Slyvester was not in my class at the time (not until 3rd grade), but I’ve seen him around. Besides, all the black kids knew each other. When we introduced ourselves, he stuttered on his name, and to my surprise, it was worse than my own. We didn’t form a pact by the end of our speech session, but I knew or at least thought, we had an understanding.
Fast forward a year or so
Sylvester and I were on the basketball court with a few other kids. He says some tease and I retort back with a stutter. Then he copies what I say with a stutter on purpose. I pause. I look up at him and say “Sylvester, why are you being so mean? You have a stutter too, you know?”
It did not hit me why he did what he did until this moment, 16 years later.
Here we both are 8 or 9, seeing ourselves in the eyes of each other. Now, he was a bully in general, but I knew it was personal for me. It was personal for me because he saw what other people saw in himself. I did not have the most supportive family to help my stutter, and I will assume that he was the same. However, I never teased him for it. I would stand there and watch him stutter his way to bully me. I have been teased for my disfluency all the time and to be honest, it’s kind of a cop-out. So I never understood why he would.
For 15 years, I never met another person who stuttered.
When I sat down at my first NSA meeting, I was shocked to see other people stutter again. A part of me was embarrassed. For one, I was angry. I asked myself, “So this is what I look like?” “How can I watch him suffer through this block?” I forced myself to not tear away, to not run away, at seeing my biggest insecurity.
And I felt terrible for feeling that way.
Perhaps Sylvester saw this same thing in me that I did not see for many moons. I won’t forgive him for being a bully in general, but I was never upset with him. I felt sorry for him. I felt more alone that we couldn’t have this understanding. So many PWS won’t meet other PWS until they are adults. We had the chance to be mad together, to share our stories together, and maybe at the end, to be okay with who we were.
So Sylvester, if you are reading this, if you grew out of your stutter, congratulations! If you haven’t, I hope you have found support or are on the path to acceptance. It’s a lonely road and you should never stutter alone.
Best,
Asia
