Better late than never? 25 years later.

My regular readers will know that I use my blog as a means to talk about topics that confuse me and I find the writing process therapeutic because it allows me to lay out my arguments in a very logical manner, addressing both sides of the argument and I just can't figure things out in my head without writing them down like that. One of the topics I dealt with last year was bullying and I had a difficult time in my teenage years as I was bullied a lot - I turned into quite a nasty horrible person as a result because I decided to give as good as I got and all I can say is if you knew me as a teenager, boy you would remember me as a totally obnoxious asshole who had no redeeming features, who probably deserved to get bullied. Being autistic, I couldn't understand why people hated me thus and it took me many years to figure out how to deal with people - I think I got there about 10 to 15 years after my peers but looking around me, I can still see adults who never ever really got there when it came to developing the right social skills to deal with people and making friends.

I got a message recently that knocked me off my feet - it was one of my bullies. Let's call him 'Ang' (not his real name). I'm not going to cut and paste what he wrote as I don't think it would be ethical to use it in my blog, but in short, well, it was a groveling apology and he humbly asked me for my forgiveness for the way he had behaved back then. You see, Ang was feeling nostalgic and was looking up information bout the RI gymnastics club back from that period, thanks to the power of Google, well he stumbled upon my blog piece here and it was for the first time that he realized the effects of what his actions were. Clearly, reading my piece disturbed him to the point where he tracked me down on Facebook and sent that groveling apology. I was both surprised and touched, I suppose the temptation would have been to close the page, not read about it or acknowledge whatever feelings he may have experienced. After all, he's there in Singapore, I'm here in London, it is not as if our paths will ever cross again  But still, he clearly regrets what he has done to me.

To begin with, I thanked him for what he wrote - he didn't have to, but he did nonetheless and it was a nice gesture. I suppose it does shows that he is a decent person trying to make amends for what he has done and I think that's admirable. For my part, I totally accepted that I had to bear part of the responsibility for what happened in the past: I was an obnoxious, autistic kid who lacked social skills and didn't know how to deal with the situation. Furthermore, the victims of bullying often blame themselves and feel ashamed of being a social outcast, so they rarely ever ask for help and they could even go into denial about the whole sorry situation. All teenagers have to learn how to get along with their peers at some stage: some learn faster than others and those who don't often pay a high price for it because they will get bullied. Well, I paid that price in secondary school and realized, this really sucks! I'd better learn to get along with my peers and the people around me and figure this out, the sooner the better. At least in principle, well, that was what happened. You see, I'm autistic: that means I'm not stupid, I just lacked social skills and thankfully I am smart enough to figure out where I was going wrong and what I needed to do. But at the risk of defending the bullies and justifying what they did to me (Stockholm syndrome, anyone?), it would have been nice to have received some help along the way to figure this out. 

Well, I've not spoken to Ang since 1994 and neither of us have made any effort to get in touch with each other in the last 23 years. Let's be clear. We were never really friends back then - he wasn't one of the main instigators of the bullying, just someone who was a part of the pack and just went along with everyone else who was targeting me. You know the was Louis Litt gets so much crap from Harvey Specter but still considers Harvey his best friend? At least I was clear that Ang wasn't my friend then. Ang didn't try to justify or excuse anything he did back then, he just offered an unreserved apology which I accepted, of course. There was some reference to 'God' which made me think he may be religious today - likewise, I can see from his Facebook page that he is a family man today with two children. It looks like his older child would be old enough for secondary school soon, so perhaps my article did make him think about how he would feel, as a father, if his child was subjected to that kind of bullying. Of course, he's a 41 year old father today and hopefully, from what I can tell, a decent person who would be a good father to his children - he wasn't quite that nice when he was a teenager but I suppose it would be rather harsh to judge people during their teenage years because they should at least be given the opportunity to learn about the world and grow up then. After all, a teenager is not the finished product but at best work in progress. It is clear that both him and I are very different people today - 23 years is after all, a very long time. I think it would be like getting to know someone from scratch, on a totally clean slate after such an incredibly long time. 

Did I find any closure with his apology? Not really, because I think I found closure a long time ago. In being able to face up to the bullying and analyzed what actually happened, the way I found closure was trying to learn from my mistakes and I owe it to myself to do so, to become a better person. People who are too defensive, who see themselves as only the victim will never learn from their mistakes. Let me give you an example of how clueless I was back in those days - I had a friend who wasn't particularly good at gymnastics, yet because he was from my primary school, I had pressured him into joining the gymnastics club just because I thought I could have one more friend there. I had clearly picked an activity that I was good at but he he struggled with the basics from the sheer lack of talent - his body just wasn't right for gymnastics. So in order to motivate him, I offered him $50 if he could learn how to do a back handspring. I remind you that I wasn't from a rich family, this was money out of my own pocket and I thought that was a nice gesture to motivate a friends because everybody likes to earn $50 easily, right? But somehow, it was misconstrued and perhaps the way I presented it was in terribly bad taste - it came across as me flaunting my (non-existent) wealth or that I was so sure he wasn't capable of the skill that I could have bet any amount of money to humiliate him. Either way, what started out as a genuinely kind gesture just blew up in my face and people like Ang hated me for it - but could you blame them for that?

Now in hindsight, I could see how that came across so badly and there are far better ways to motivate people to achieve something than to offer them money. I saw the issue entirely from my point of view, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if someone offered me money for every new gymnastics trick I learnt? I could become rich as I was improving so quickly. Besides, it was extremely rewarding for me each time I accomplished something new and all I wanted was for my friend to have that feeling too. What I had failed to do was to see things from my friend's perspective and the fact was had pressured him into doing something I liked, but he didn't - if I valued that friendship, I should have just said to him, "okay my friend, tell me what you like. Forget gymnastics. This weekend, let's go do something you enjoy together and I wanna see what you find interesting." That would have been $50 well spent, doing something that he enjoyed and it would have brought us closer together as friends.  Of course, it is easy for me to look back upon the episode and see where I went so wrong - but at that time, I couldn't understand why a noble gesture on my part would lead to so many people hating me. I found peace and closure by revisiting those events in my head and realizing where I went wrong, taking responsibility for my mistakes and learning some useful lessons. I can't changed what happened, but I can use my more sensible, mature adult brain to make sense of situations that did seem incredibly perplexing to me as a child then and that for me, is closure. I didn't need an apology, I simply needed to understand why things turned out the way they did. 

You know, it is extremely rare for people to get an apology for something like that so many years later. The guy who bullied me was at school with me in the period 1989 to 1992 - so that's like 25 years ago. I wasn't expecting an apology, I certainly wasn't waiting for one so that's why I was so surprised when it came out of the blue. You can't wait for people who have wronged you to somehow come to their senses and for their conscience to suddenly compel them to track you down via social media and offer you a groveling apology 25 years later. It may happen, but it probably wouldn't. But  nobody would wait for an apology when there's so much we can do to find closure on our own terms with some unhappy episode in our lives. Finding closure on our own terms allows us to feel empowered in the way we deal with the situation, but if you're waiting for a third party (like an ex, I have met some people still angry with their exes years after they broke up) to feel remorse and apologize, then no, you're putting the ball in their court and you should never surrender control of your quest for closure to someone else like that. The more bitter and painful the memories, the more you need to retain control of how you choose to deal with your emotions. Thankfully, I had long moved on and I did so on my own terms. 

I know what I am saying may prove to be controversial for some people because I was a victim of bullying but I am saying that I am blaming myself for what happened. It may seem that I am going done the route of 'victim-blaming' which is something a lot of people are vehemently against, especially in the case of rape. Don't get me wrong. I am not justifying bullying in any circumstances, I am just saying that there was a lot more I could have done to have ensured that I wasn't a victim of bullying and there were lessons to be learnt. So for example, there is a person in my office now who has said and done some stupid things which has led me to think, "I don't like this person". But just because I dislike this colleague, would I go out of my way to make his/her life miserable - would I bully him/her just because this person has failed to become a good friend of mine? No, I would never go down that route - all I do is keep my distance from this person and maintain cordial but formal working relationship with this person. It would've been nice if the students who didn't like me back in secondary school had taken the same attitude with people they didn't like - just avoid them, you don't need to bully them. But what can I say? RI had a really awful culture of bullying and the problem with Singaporean parents is that they just assume that bullying only happens in the 'bad schools' where the stupid kids end up, but it would never happen in the 'good schools' for the smart kids. But the fact is, bullying can happen anywhere and you can't avoid it. The only thing you can do is develop better social skills and learn how to cope with the difficult people in your life.

But allow me to show you how I am applying what I am preaching to my everyday life - I had an unpleasant incident at work today which I had to deal with. You see, I am the salesman, I don't put together the complex investment structures that my company creates - that's for the super intelligent people in the structuring team. So a client called up with a complex question about a product which I couldn't answer - this was lunchtime and I tried passing my phone to a colleague who is responsible for the structuring of this product. He shook his head and made it clear he wasn't willing to take the call but for some reason, I thought he was just being lazy and insisted on passing the phone to him. Well, what happened next was awkward - he shouted that he doesn't want to take the call and walked away but the client would have already heard everything. Turns out he knew what the client was asking but it was such a difficult question he didn't have the answer - he needed to sit down, go through his information and then come up with the answer. In short, we should have done two things: I should have lied and said that my colleague wasn't around, that I'd call the client back a bit later. Or he should have taken the phone from me and said something like, "I am not at my desk, I need to check my notes and I'll call you back shortly with the answers." Both would have been acceptable but I guess we both panicked.

Anyway, my colleague angrily berated me for insisting on passing him the phone and I told him that he overreacted in the way he shouted at me when the client was still on the line. I said, fine, I'll deal with this. I walked downstairs and called the client back to try to deal with his issue as I felt really bad about having looked really unprofessional. Within two minutes, my colleague tracked me down and took the phone from me, handled the question (remember, he could answer it much better than I could as it was a question about his work, not mine) so at least we resolved that issue for the client. My colleague then apologized for having shouted at me earlier as he had given in to blind panic and I could have played the part of the victim, but I acknowledged equally that it was wrong of me to have insisted on passing the phone to him and that it was not the right way to handle a difficult question. The more difficult the question, the more one has to store for time rather than try to get the answer immediately - after all, this is not some exam at school where one has got to give the teacher the right answer within a limited time frame. I too had panicked when asked a question I could not answer - but in taking responsibility for the mistake I had made, I felt I can move on from the matter. If I had simply played the victim's card, I would have allowed it to sour my working relationship with my colleague. That's why I never allow myself to play the victim's card regardless of the situation. Yes my colleague's reaction was uncalled for and can't be justified at all but I was the one who create the situation in the first place when I tried to pass the phone to him.

You see, when you play the victim's card, you give in to the mentality that you are innocent, blameless and perfect - that you've done absolutely nothing wrong yet you are so unlucky and unfortunate to have had bad things happen to you. Not only is this an inaccurate representation of the situation, it also fuels your sense of victimhood - this sense of being victimized, "people are horrible, the world is a terrible place, why am I so unlucky, life sucks etc". Most of all, if you ever embrace this kind of mentality, you also end up feeling incredibly helpless - if you're perfect and had done nothing wrong, then you don't need to change, others need to stop being idiots and assholes. But it is so much easier to change yourself than to try to change others around you, that is why I always choose to take responsibility for the situation because at least that way, I can be more constructive and focus on what I can do to prevent putting myself in that position again. At least I can feel like I am doing something constructive about the situation, there is indeed something I can do and simply by knowing I can change my attitude and approach, I feel very much empowered and more optimistic about the situation.

So coming back to Ang, do I blame him for what happened? Well, yes and no - yes his behaviour could not be justified but like the phone call incident in the office, I did create the situation in the first place. Sure someone like Ang could have chosen to ignore me rather than become my bully - but here's the thing: if you look at his record, he's done rather well for himself having carved a pretty decent career in the Singaporean civil service. Today, he does look the part of the caring father of two children and comes across as a man who cares about his family. In short, there's nothing from his adult life today that could even remotely suggest that he was a bully in secondary school who did do some pretty nasty things. What does this tell us about human nature then? I guess sometimes, people can change and that some people can make terrible mistakes when they are young, only to realize just how wrong they were when they look back in horror at some of the things they had done. There is no doubt that Ang genuinely felt remorseful about what he had done to me. Is he a decent guy who just made a mistake when he was young and immature? Should we excuse teenagers who are bullies for their behaviour, chalking it up to the folly of youth, assuming that they will grow up one day and realize what they did was wrong? Do we not so much condone, but rather just tolerate a certain amount of bullying to take place in the schools, as that's a very organic way to teach children not to be a stupid, autistic asshole (yes I am referring to myself - I was the stupid, autistic asshole) if you don't wanna get bullied? Or as adults, do we owe it to our teenagers to protect them from bullying in the first place by trying to create an environment which stamps out bullying from a young age?

So that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How would you react if someone who has wronged you 25 years ago suddenly looked you up on social media and offered you a groveling apology? Should I reconnect with Ang and get to know him all over again from scratch after so many years? And what do you make about my method to make peace with the past, find closure by taking responsibility for having caused these situations in the first place? Has anyone ever offered you an apology after such a long time and did you accept it? Do leave a comment below, thanks for reading.