Oh boy, where do I start
I got bussed to elementary school in a rich neighborhood. I was poor, I was one of the only Jewish kids, and I was the only kid with divorced parents. I was the only fat kid, and I was five foot five by the time I was ten.
So every single day, I got my *** kicked, I got called names, I had caricatures of me passed around class, there was a book passed around class where the kids made up things about me, you name it I got it. It wasn't all for being fat - some of it was for being poor, some of it was for having divorced parents, and some of it was for being Jewish - but it all sucked. I was faking sick two or three days a week, I was miserable and withdrawn and starting from age nine I used to write suicide notes and fantasize about killing myself. So my mom went up to the school to ask why nothing had been done and the principal told her it was my own fault because if I wasn't so fat they wouldn't have anything to pick on me about. Any trust I may have at any point had in authority figures pretty much evaporated at that point. Towards the end of fifth grade I snapped, kicked a kid's ***, and I was the one who got in trouble.
After elementary school into middle and high school I got moo'd at, I got things thrown at me, I got fake hit on, I got sexually assaulted and was told that I had to have initiated it because I was such a hideous troll that no one would ever do that to me.
Thankfully I got to college and got some self-esteem, but ugh. What a horror.
A lot of the kids that tormented me in elementary school have added me on facebook recently - not to apologize, but just for the sake of adding me. I initially added all of them back and then realized that I did not owe them anything and I removed all except a few who were my friends/did not torment me. Had they apologized, I would feel differently about them but we are all in our 20s now and they should be ashamed of how they treated me (and the other Easy Target Kid - the short, small, shy Jewish boy in our class) but they aren't. Does it make me a small person that I enjoy the fact that their tanning, drinking, and smoking has made a lot of them look like they are in their 40s when they are all 23?
I occasionally do my grocery shopping on the way home from the gym because they are right next to each other. I work out in yoga pants and t shirts or tanktops. Twice in the last couple of months, I have scared small children. One parent scolded the child for pointing at me and saying THAT LADY IS SCARY and one parent, when confronted after his children pointed at me and screamed HEY DID YOU SEE THAT THING WALK BY, just smirked and said nothing.
I don't have much hope that this will ever stop, honestly.