By JASMYN BEMBOOM
Staff Writer
“Being able to zoom out and get some perspective… underscored that we can never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives.”
For decades, Simone Ellin was struggling with low-grade depression, and anxiety. Her lifelong shyness, hersensitity and self-consciousness, which made her a perfect target for bullying and exclusion have had a lasting effect on her.
One day in 2019, she was at work procrastinating then she started to think about the girl who rejected her in 7th grade. Whenever she thought about it, it still stung her. Then she got an idea to contact her classmates from middle and high school, not only the people who bullied her but the women who she went to school with. She contacted the people on social media which was easy to find most of her former classmates. She began to send messages about her projects and see if they were willing to participate. A Lot of the girls were up for the task and had many stories to tell while others didn’t remember much about the years.
One message she got was one of her old bullies, she wrote, “simone, hope all is well with you. I was not always nice to you. I am so sorry for that.” They talked for a while and she even called her to apologize over the phone and told Simone that she had a miserable life.
A lot of her former bullies apologies for what they did to her. Then she wanted to track down the girls who were victims of the most severe bullying. She assumed that many didn’t want to be found and had chosen to leave their childhood. She however did track down a few.
One woman told her, “I hated my school experience and experienced intense bullying… It wasn’t until i reached high school that I located a community of people, and it was my perception that we were considered the ‘hippies’ and we carried a sort of stigma related to that.”
For her, comforting her childhood bullies, had been giving her tremendously healing, and that’s something she wished for everyone, no matter who they are or were, no matter how they hurt or were hurt. Sometimes you have to go in the past and talk to the people who hurt you so you can have a clean slate for the future and don’t always have to think about who hurt you.