I was maid of honour for the girl I bullied mercilessly for years

A lot of people assume when kids are mean, they don’t really know what they’re doing; that they’re harmless. I knew exactly what damage I was causing, because I’d been a victim of it for years.
From when I was seven to thirteen, I had no friends. And I wasn’t just left alone to get on with life; kids made fun of me constantly. I had braces for years, granny-floral glasses and, best of all, warts on my hands and arms.
And my personality changed to fit the profile, too. I wouldn’t understand for many years that people, particularly kids, absorb the identities they are given by others.
I developed nervous tics, including counting everything I did in eights, right down to the pieces of toilet paper I used.
I obsessively repeated whatever people said to me under my breath, over and over again until someone else spoke to me and I’d change the sentence.
Once in the girl’s locker room I became so frustrated with the other girls sharing inside jokes I wasn’t a part of, I slammed the hairbrush I was holding onto the floor. It terrified the girls, making them more inclined to shout “freak.”
It terrified me, because I felt like one.
I was just relieved when Flick joined the school; everyone who picked on me had moved onto her.
In my school, tormenting others was the top social currency. I soon realised that if I joined in with everyone else, maybe I’d finally be accepted.
Ironically, I didn’t really like the cool kids. I had nothing in common with them, nor they with me. The person I liked the most was this girl I made cry every day.
When we first met, at the school’s “Welcome Day” for new students, Flick seemed so comfortable in her own skin that she gave off a magnetic energy. She wore a rainbow tie dye tops and jelly sandals (which I loved but my parents never let me get). I so desperately hoped that she would be my friend.
I only stopped bullying Flick when a teacher forced me. It was humiliating when she made us apologise to Flick, reprimanding us for such shameful behaviour.
Later, we discussed how we couldn’t believe Flick lied and said we were bullying her.
Too scared of punishment to go near Flick, the girls soon turned their cruelty onto me.
I was confused — hadn’t I proved myself to be just like them?
Everything came to a head when I was invited to a “cool girl” sleepover.
They wiped cake on my face — and I let them.
I slept backwards in my sleeping bag so the hood would cover my face and they couldn’t draw things on me while I slept.
They put my hand in a bowl of hot water so I wet myself.
Flick quickly offered to be my friend.
She’d gotten herself some of her own by that point — other girls who had been bullied.
There were no questions, no conditions; I wasn’t reverted to the bottom of a food chain because with them there wasn’t one.
It turned out that Flick and I had a lot in common; boy-obsessed, emotional, big on daydreaming.
We shared secrets, we made each other scrapbooks.
We were normal teenage girls.
Years later at Flick’s dinner table, her kid sister burst out, “Didn’t you used to bully Flick?”
I froze.
Flick replied, “Yeah … how embarrassing for her!” She winked at me, a familiar expression.
That night, I gave her an overdue apology.
“When it happened to me, I wanted to die sometimes,” I said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I know what you mean.”
Today, my best friend is winning at life. She graduated from the University of Cambridge after a year volunteering in Uganda.
She survived a motorcycle crash in Kampala and calls it a “funny story.”
She got her nose pierced. She still loves rainbow coloured anything.
And last summer, I walked down the aisle as her Maid of Honour.