Dear boys who bullied me in middle school but hit on me in high school,
First of all, to set the record straight – the only reason I am even acknowledging your existence to this day is to call out the bitter irony of this funny place we call life.
You don’t deserve this letter – and I mean that not in a “poor baby, you don’t deserve this” way, but rather more of an acknowledgement of how undeserving you are of provoking a response from me, albeit nearly 10 years later. I expect no apologies, pity or rectification.
As a girl, your words forced me into pushing back tears in the bathroom stalls but as a woman, they serve as a constant reminder that I take disrespect from nobody – that I hold myself to a standard higher than I thought fathomable at only 12 and 13 years old. It’s painfully comedic how the same people who told me that I was and I quote, “too different to be cute” or “a weird Indian,” (which is culturally inaccurate, FYI) are the same people who when puberty hit suddenly fetishized the same things they found oh so repulsive years before. The same ones who mocked my skin and hair, who mocked the way these nonnative words slipped off my tongue and refused to let me forget just how different I was ended up being the ones to have the audacity to so tastelessly message me “Hi, beautiful,” or “Hey, girl,” because one day the world decided that “my type of pretty” was pretty too, so therefore I should disregard the animosity that fueled so many of my insecurities growing up.
What’s more unnerving to me than the hurtful words that came out of your mouth was how all of your actions were so easily justified by “boys will be boys” or “didn’t you know? If a boy teases you, that means he likes you!” I’m still waiting on the day where it becomes a societal norm to stop endorsing bullying as a form of affection or endearment. I’m never going to be okay with boys like you justifying yourself years later by saying “we were so immature back then.”
But again, the purpose of me writing this letter is not to reminisce or to ignite an already dead flame — but to let women and girls understand the importance of acknowledging how much better they are than those who put them down, how much stronger they are than those who remind them over and over again that they’re not. Although the shadows of those hurtful words may still follow them around, they do not define the strong, poised and self-loving women who for years have had to hide behind the veil of insecurities cultivated by boys like you who use the denigration of others to mask your own self-loathing. So no, I’m not going to reply back to your message, no matter how many times you reply back with “hello…?”
Sincerely,
Hannah