Hi,

You may be reading this because you stumbled upon my article or because you know who I was writing this to. I want you to know that I don’t hate you for what you did. Middle school is far behind us. We both have our own lives now.

I’m still in New Hampshire, and you’re thousands of miles away. I know you are thousands of miles away in 2018, but I hope you don’t forget where you were in 2010. You may have forgotten up until this point, but that’s OK. As long as you remember now.

I want you to know all those times in homeroom when you called me fat or five-chinned, I hated myself inside. I would go home every day crying because I hated my body. Before you started calling me fat, I already knew I was. Not fat, but overweight at least. I grew up chubby. You should know, we went to elementary school together.

The first day of school that year, I wore a jean skirt and a purple PB and J scented shirt from Justice. My hair was in pigtails, and my face was fully round. I stood in the mirror for a good 20 minutes before school contemplating this outfit my mom helped me pick out.

I already knew I wasn’t going to be the skinniest girl in school that day. In fact, I smoothed out my neck as I looked in the mirror.

When I braved Mountain View Middle School, I didn’t expect anyone to see me as thin. I would've never expected you to bully me. I thought you were my friend. You went to my birthday party the year before, yet there you were hurling insults.

In the months that followed, your insults only heightened my insecurities. This wasn’t because I thought I was fatter than I was or because of the lines around my neck I’ve had since infancy.

This was because I now had an audience.

This was the point where I started to have real crushes. The boy I liked was in our homeroom. I wondered if as you were making fun of me, was my crush listening? I assumed he did, so I resorted to offering him my Trident layers gum or my tortilla chips and salsa so he would notice me.

I knew this wasn’t enough to make him like me, so after school, I would put on my Mary-Kate and Ashley perfume and listen to Ke$ha. I would pretend to be like you, one of the popular girls, one of the girls he would notice. I would hope that one day I would get his number.

The bullying and crying continued for the entire year. You never got caught, yet each day in homeroom was an embarrassment for me. I worried my now-best friend would think less of me because of what you said.

I wondered if she was secretly making fun of me with you. For years, your comments stuck with me. They may have evaded you over the years, but they stuck with me.

All throughout middle school, I wondered whether anyone remembered what you said to me. I gradually lost weight, but I wondered if people still saw me as that bullied girl in fifth grade. Even today I still feel like that same girl, but I'm not her anymore.

I've lost weight and started eating healthily. I've begun to enjoy exercising. I feel I am at a good place with the friends I have and the relationships I've made.

I hope you feel the same about yourself.

I've spent this entire letter bringing up memories you probably didn't want to associate with yourself, so why do you ask?

I have a feeling you were as insecure as I was. We both came from a small school and wanted to make friends. There were plenty of girls from the middle school who had cooler clothes and richer families than ours. Girls who already caught the attention of those new boys we liked.

I really hope you're in a good place now. I wish you all the best in your new, sunny home. Even though we went to different high schools and colleges, it doesn't mean these times in middle school never happened.

Have you ever seen the movie “You Again” with Kristen Bell and Odette Annable? If you haven't, look it up or watch it, but I always wondered if that would be us when we are older.

At some reunion or party, we see each other again. I am the bullied trying to prove I'm not the same girl anymore and obsess over proving that to you, while you pretend that it never happened. Even though we both know you remember.

We do such mean things to each other until we revert back to the fifth grade.

Instead of pretending, let's just accept it. I want you to accept that you did it. I want you to know you aren't the reason behind my insecurities, but being bullied fueled my reasons to hate myself all those years.

Let's just accept it and move on. I don't want to remember myself as the bullied girl, and I know you don't want to remember yourself as the bully. Clean slate.

Sincerely yours,

Me