To my childhood bullies,

It’s hard to believe I’m even writing this after making it a point to keep as much distance as possible from all of you over the past five years. To be perfectly honest, I would like it to stay that way. After all, I am in a much better place now and have no reason to revisit the years of pain you’ve all caused me. But now that I finally have the proper platform of Odyssey and social media, I’d like to use this opportunity to address one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to endure in my life.

After five years of minimal or no contact, I want you all to know that I forgive you, but not because you deserve it. In fact, I doubt that any of you feel genuinely sorry for your actions, or for that matter even know the pain you caused me. It’s for that reason that a small part of me wishes you could go through the pain I did, because reading an article or having me tell you the suffering I endured does not come close to spending every day for years dreading going to school, the sleepless nights, and the physical and emotional torment that you put me through for years. But wishing that on you makes me just as bad as all of you, and that’s someone I promised myself I would never be.

I forgive you because I deserve to move on. I deserve to live the life that you tried so hard to deprive me of. For years, your actions prevented me from expressing myself without fear of ridicule or making a friend because anyone who would dare to express sympathy for me would quickly be subjected to your wrath. It seemed so unjustified at the time, and perhaps you had your own battles to fight that I knew nothing about which caused you to do the things that you did. But even if I were to give you the benefit of the doubt that I personally feel you don’t deserve, I still feel you have no excuse for causing me the pain that you did. The reason I say that is simple, I fought a battle that drove me to contemplate suicide, but I still did not stoop so low as to bring someone else down with me for no reason. I didn’t feel better about myself by causing someone else to suffer, and if I could feel that way then you could have felt that way too.

Despite all the beatings, name-calling and countless other incidents throughout the years that drove me into the deepest despair imaginable, I thank you. After all the days in school that I stayed quiet all day eating lunch alone because I was afraid any wrong move would earn me more physical or verbal abuse, the nights of crying myself to sleep fearing going to school the next day, every single day of that struggle lead to me becoming the person I am today. That person is a fighter, who learned after several long and agonizing years of suffering to live life the way I wanted without giving a damn what anyone had to say about it. I love that person, and I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am today if it weren’t for those years of pain.

I may have made some major progress in the past five years, but I am by no means healed. Your torment had a lasting impression on my personality, and I fight it every day. Every time I feel a wave of social anxiety or a fear of being myself because I don’t know how others will react, I fight. Every time I have to overcome a fear of embarrassment, I know I’m fighting a battle within myself that you started when you tried to make me think that I was not good enough, cool enough, or smart enough to be the person I am. Every time my mind replays the horrible memories, I fight to move forward and not let the past that you made painful hold me back.

I have been fighting for five years and I’m not done yet. I made a choice to be successful despite all of your attempts to hold me back from being myself. Now I’m following my dreams at college, announcing basketball games for hundreds of people, hosting my own radio show at WBCR, and writing for Odyssey. I’m being myself, telling my story for thousands of people with no fear of rejection or failure, and to think not too long ago I was afraid to raise my hand in a classroom because you might make fun of me for whatever I had to say. Thanks for being the driving force behind my success, even though your intention was the exact opposite.

If you’ve made it this far, I want you to know that I don’t want an explanation or an apology from any of you. It’s too late. I’ve moved on and frankly, I don’t care what you have to say at this point. Nothing you can say will erase the years of suffering or rebuild a relationship, so don’t bother trying because I’m not interested in hearing what you have to say. What I do want you to know though, is that I think about you all very often. Every time I announce at a game, every time I broadcast live on the air, and every time I write an article, I remind you all-- who tried your hardest to keep me from expressing myself in the most minor form— that you didn’t win. Every breath I take is a reminder that I went through hell and came out with a smile on my face. For that reason I’ll never wish anything bad on any of you, because after all that you did, you couldn’t keep me from being me.

Sincerely, Andrew Killips