My friend Lucretia wrote an amazing piece about her days of being bullied. http://lucretia.amplify.com/2010/10/06/why-i-hate-my-childhood-nickname-a-tale-of-two-selves/

We were there together and so it has a lot of meaning to me. I wanted to have a record of the comment I wrote to her post.

I have no problem being “outed” as a bully victim. I am rather proud of how I used my status to my advantage (in dodgeball, I would get the other team to aim at me, I would duck quickly out of the way and my team would get more balls to throw).

I knew it was hard to be my friend. That is why I always left you an out, much to your dismay I found out years later. I didn’t realize you got it just as bad if not worse when you weren’t around me. No wonder you were able to stay friends with me. There was no benefit to not being my friend like there was for many others.

The bullies in our school were pretty pathetic when it came to nicknames, weren’t they. I am proud/impressed you can put your nickname out there. That is one piece of information about my being bullied days that I can’t have exposed.

There are times when I am ok with it and it doesn’t bother me. I feel strong and I can tell people that stupid name. And then someone will mention it when I least expect it and I feel open and exposed and raw all over again. I learned that I can’t let others have that info because I will never know if I can handle it coming back at me all the time. No one has treated me poorly with it, it is said with love and caring. But to have someone who wasn’t there mention it when I am not expecting it will send me over an edge. Sometimes.It is a risk I am no longer willing to take.

Thank you for sharing yet another piece of a time we shared together. You and your bits and pieces have helped me a lot in getting a much more realistic view of that part of my life and what I still do that causes me problems because of it.

And because I can’t shut up, I wrote a second comment:

I gotta say, I miss my friend Tia. I thought the name was one of the coolest ones ever.

I really like this Lucretia chick I am getting to know. She doesn’t have the self destructive nature Tia did and is really fabulous. She has a lot of the good parts of Tia. But I didn’t mind what could be considered the bad parts of Tia. They just were. I hate how much bad things happened to Tia, so much so that this really cool name that I loved ever since I was a kid needed to be put aside.

But I am also glad that it can be put aside and a name you have always loved can grow to take over.

I will miss Tia, but I can get used to Lucretia (I still have to slow myself down and sound it out to spell it. LOL).