WEBVTT

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(upbeat music)

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- When I was in middle
school I was popular

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and everybody on the
surface sort of thought

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that I was really well adjusted.

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It just didn\'t really seem
like I had any problems.

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But underneath the surface, I was a bully

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and I bullied the girl Jane
for all of middle school

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especially because she was
good at all of the things

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that I felt like I wasn\'t good at.

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In sixth grade, before sixth grade started

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we had like a sixth grade
barbecue down at a beach.

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And I actually struck up
a friendship with Jane

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and one other girl and we
kind of all figured out

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that we all really liked cows.

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And so we decided that
we were gonna make a club

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called \"Cows Go Moo\" and the
three of us hung out all night.

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The next few weeks into middle school,

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we continued to have this club

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and there was this girl

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and she wanted to join
in the \"Cows Go Moo\" club

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and we didn\'t really want her to.

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But Jane wanted to be nice

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and invite this other girl
into our group with us,

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which I\'m sure she just thought
it was like a nice thing

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and it wouldn\'t be a big deal

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but me and my friend were
very angered by that.

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(dramatic music)

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I got these shoes,

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these pink shoes that
I thought were so cool.

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And a few days after I had worn them,

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Jane came up to me and asked me

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and if she could buy the same shoes as me.

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And of course in my head I was like,

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no, like that\'s copying me.

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But I sort of like sarcastically was like,

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sure, if you want to.

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And then I sort of like
immediately went back to my friends

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and told them how she was
like trying to copy me

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and how annoying it was.

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(dramatic music)

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There was this play that we auditioned for

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was the first play that
our class was ever in.

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I was really excited
\'cause I thought maybe

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I would get a pretty big role

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\'cause I was sort of like
the only person in my class

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who had theater experience.

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All of my friends were like,

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oh you\'re totally gonna get a big role.

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Like it\'s gonna be great.

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And we had auditions and
then I didn\'t get a big role

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but Jane got the biggest
role of anybody in our class.

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And I remember being really jealous of her

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and also really angry and upset

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and I didn\'t really know what to do.

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I told some of my friends

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and I think it sort of quickly spread

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to a fair number of our classmates.

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And so I think it was sort
of like incidents like that

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that everybody just sort of was like,

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well, we don\'t really like this girl.

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And that was just sort of it.

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(brooding music)

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Throughout middle school,

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my dad always really wanted
me to be friends with Jane.

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I think he just sort of saw that

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she was a good student
and she was a nice person

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and she was into acting like I was.

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And so to him, that sort of meant like

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okay, you should be friends with her.

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And I think that was like

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a large source of sort of
rejection for me in a way.

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It made me like very angry and
even more angry towards Jane

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because it was like, why her?

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Like, why is she the one

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who\'s getting put on this
really nice pedestal?

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And why not almost me?

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She was always getting
praise from the teacher.

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She was always like on top of the class.

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She would always sort of talk about

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how her parents had helped her do stuff

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or her parents would come
to school with her projects.

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And I like always refused
help from my parents

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which was kind of my own problem.

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But I felt very frustrated
by the fact that

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she was getting these
good grades and I wasn\'t

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but she was getting all of
this help from her parents

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and I wasn\'t.

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She didn\'t mean to, didn\'t even know,

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but like took away all of these things

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that sort of made me
feel good about myself

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and so in my mind, I sort of had to

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take her down.

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(dramatic music)

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(brooding music)

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It was never like pushing or,

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it was never anything like physical.

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It was always things that
were really like little

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because we didn\'t really want
like the adults to find out.

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So, it was always things
like turning away from her

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or talking bad about
her even if it was like

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we knew that she knew that
we were talking about her.

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You could probably barely notice

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that we were being really mean
to her, but we always were.

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And I think we all sort
of encouraged each other

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it was sort of the norm almost
like you eat lunch every day,

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you talk bad about Jane every day.

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Like it was just something that was like

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so ingrained in our every day.

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Like it, it was almost like
we couldn\'t not do that

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\'cause we were so used to it.

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It was just like a habit that we kept

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doing and doing and doing.

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(brooding music)

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I definitely didn\'t put any thought into

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how much I was affecting
her day-to-day life

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or her self esteem

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or what being singled out by the class

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how that was affecting her.

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It was just all like, what
does this mean for me?

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How is this affecting me?

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What does this give me?

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I was always really
scared to ask for help.

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I didn\'t feel like I could ask my teachers

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or really my parents,

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because I felt like if
I asked them for help

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then it was just confirming the fact that

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I wasn\'t good enough at school.

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Nobody really seemed to
notice that I was struggling.

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I really started to believe
that I wasn\'t good enough

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that I wasn\'t really
capable of being good enough

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and that it was just a given

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that I wasn\'t going to do well in school.

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(brooding music)

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Near the very end of eighth grade

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we had this big class meeting

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and right in the middle
of it Jane stood up

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and just said you guys have
been mean to me for three years

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and how bad it felt.

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We all realized that if
we didn\'t apologize to her

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then we were gonna get suspended.

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I was brought into the office with Jane

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and the head of our school.

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And I remember feeling
like very uncomfortable

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and like I\'m really sorry

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and I think in some ways
like genuinely meant it

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but it was like not in my head like,

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oh this is like actually a big thing

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and like I\'ve had this huge effect.

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I knew I was gonna have to see Jane.

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For the first time I was kind
of like waiting for the moment

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that we saw each other.

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And I sort of saw her like
from the end of the hall

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and I knew that I had to walk past her

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to get to where I was going.

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I remember like feeling really freaked out

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but I couldn\'t really go
anywhere and I was sort of like,

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okay, let\'s get it over with.

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She was with somebody else, like a friend

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and I was by myself.

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And I walked past and I just was like, hi,

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really quickly and then kept going

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and she didn\'t say anything to me.

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And I remember just feeling really ashamed

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but also like I understood and
I sort of decided after that

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that I was gonna be nice to her

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or at least I was gonna attempt

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to actually get to know her as a person

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which I had never previously done really.

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And at the end of the year,

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I was too scared to say anything to her

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but I wrote in her yearbook
that I was sorry for what I did.

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So that was sort of now
like two or three apologies

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and that was really what it was like,

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okay, we\'re like really
moving on from this.

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In high school when I got to know Jane,

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I got to know her as like a
very like unique individual

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and like unique in a way
that I really admire.

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She\'s really great fashion sense

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and a really great presence.

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And like she\'s very
spontaneous and imaginative

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and creative and just as
like a really great person

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and I think like has a
lot of light around her

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and as a source for light

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I think in a lot of other people\'s lives.

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Being mean to Jane,

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for me, took away the pain
of feeling bad about myself

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and feeling like

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there was nothing that
I could do about that.

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Like there was something
that I could be in control of

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something that could maybe make me feel

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like a little bit better about myself.

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And I think that

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those feelings that I felt about myself

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by being mean to Jane, like
I never dealt with them.

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I never like faced them.

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And almost 10 years later,

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I feel like I\'m only
at the point where like

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I\'m finally starting to
deal with those feelings

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because I pushed them down for so long.

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I think,

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when I was like 19 or 20 and

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I did like my gap year program

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and they just talked about
compassion all the time.

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And I like,

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not that I didn\'t get it

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but I was just like,

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I don\'t feel like I know
how to be compassionate.

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And I think I realized that like

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I wasn\'t really
compassionate towards myself,

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so how could I be compassionate
towards anybody else?

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So I think once I learned to
be compassionate for myself

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and I think that\'s different than

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feeling bad for yourself
obviously, but yeah.

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Because I think like when
you feel bad for yourself,

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it\'s more of a like,

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oh, woe is me.

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Like I\'m really sad or angry

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or I\'m not good at whatever.

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Whereas like when you\'re
compassionate towards yourself like

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you are able to understand
and look at like

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why you do the negative things that you do

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and like how those things
negatively affect you and

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you start to like work towards
moving through that I think.

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Yeah.

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(brooding music)

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(upbeat music)