I messaged my high school bully 35 years later — and we’re friends now

This is a First Person column by Melanie Chambers, who lives in Rossland, BC. For more information on CBC’s First Person stories, see the frequently asked questions.

It happened more than three decades ago, and yet, as I type a message to my high school bully, my hands are shaking. I feel like I’m back in the hallways of Dartmouth High as I walk over to her. Back then I kept my eyes on the ground until, wam, She checked me on the shoulder and made me trip and my books and pens fly. Her cackling smile faded as she walked away, leaving me on my knees to collect my things.

But now, decades later, I occasionally see her photos popping up on friends’ Facebook pages, and I reach out.

“I wanted to know why I became a target for you? Did I incite you in some way? Or was I with someone you wanted?’

Click. Sent. Message gone. Deep breath. But when I get up to get a drink to calm my nerves, I see the little dots moving on the screen. She’s already responding! I sit back down and wait for Kendra’s message.

“I’m so sorry you consider yourself a target of mine… it feels so awful to know that I’ve had such a negative lasting impact on someone. Especially someone who didn’t do anything to me to deserve it. Please be “Obviously you didn’t do anything wrong. I was all of it.”

In a long thoughtful reply, Kendra revealed her own experiences of trauma, sexual assault, and years of therapy. It was so much more than a single answer. So much more than I asked for.

As a child, I was often targeted by my female peers. In 4th grade, I stood out as the new kid. Our family moved from Dartmouth, NS, to the sleepy, rural shores of St. Margaret’s Bay, and I often wore my mother’s discarded blazers and dresses. One day at recess, several 6th grade girls pushed me against the brick wall like a prisoner facing a firing squad.

“Beautiful girl, who do you think you are?” they cried.

Later, in 9th grade, when I dared to date a friend’s ex-boyfriend, my group of friends banned me for the rest of high school.

Kendra was a grade above me, and we had never spoken before she started bullying me in 10th grade, but she made me dread school that year. When she finally got the new guy I was dating (he dumped me for her), the teasing stopped, but the damage was already done: I had learned that women were the competition.

When I met Kendra on Zoom not long after our initial Facebook posts, she revealed more.

“Remember when we had to be pulled apart in the school bathroom?” she asked. No. I had completely blocked the memory of us pulling each other’s hair. What else was I suppressing?

We made plans to meet in person when I was in Halifax a few months later. I was writing a memoir about female sexuality and I was curious to meet her. Perhaps this bullying incident explains why I always found it difficult to trust other women. After we signed out, I closed my laptop and sobbed, shocked by my relief. Her words released three decades of tension I never knew I was carrying.

When we finally met in person, we hugged intensely.

At first it felt unreal, confusing and scary to look her in the eye after so many years. Women are notoriously hard on each other: we gossip, we slander each other. But during those three hours at dinner, she often touched my arm and reassuringly said my name as we talked about age, sexuality, the shame of being a sexually curious woman, body image, therapy, moms, dads, and relationships. We said everything we had learned about what it meant to be a woman. We discovered that we were more alike than different.

We said goodbye and hugged again.

“You were a gift to me, Melanie,” she told me several times during our dinner.

I realized I had given her the chance to say she was sorry and reconcile the past. Her words were healing for me too. I often distrusted women and her message softened some of that judgment. It changed how I look at women – we all have our backstories. And this time we were finally on the same side. Like friends.

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