so yesterday i was contacted by someone via Classmates.com. she included only her married name. but the first name was the first name of the one person who made me cry on a weekly basis from K-8.

and i called my mom and said "do you know of any other julie in brownies besides julie goldberg?" and she says no - there was only one julie in elementary school and that was her.

now. as is the case in many schools, there was a three tier system in our school. losers, middles, & popular kids. i was at the top of the middles. julie was the top of the popular kids. she ruled out of fear.

i went to her birthday parties when she felt like inviting me, didn't when she didn't. was included on some things, not on others. sometimes it was better to not be included because including me often meant that she had no losers to pick on and would aim at me.

she was not a very nice person. to say the least. she tormented the losers mercilessly. me, she just picked on when she ran out of losers. or when she felt like it.

she was the person who made me feel like shit. i've spent MANY therapy hours talking about how much i beat myself up for following her. like. when she was picking on debby cohen. and i would feel awful but was never strong enough to stand up to her and tell her to stop it. for some reason, that really stayed with me.

that i was "too weak" to ever stand up for what i knew to be right... it is either that message or the "you're a loser" stuff that comes back to me in times of weakness.

so her email is all chummy. like we were friends. like she didn't call me scummy or make fun of my clothes or point out at her bat mitzvah that i was wearing the same dress i wore to someone else's bat mitzvah and that my parents drove a ford.

so she writes. and now i am writing back. i'm not going to lie to her and say we were friends. but i'm also not about to tell her how much she fucked me up. or tell her to watch oprah today because they are doing a show on girls and bullying.

here's my start:

"Wow. Of course I remember. We went through 8th grade together. I went to your Bat Mitzvah. Sometimes to birthday parties or pool parties if you invited me that year. I guess we were kind of friends. To be honest (sorry - can't help it, I grew up to be a pretty upfront person after never speaking my mind as a kid), you were kind of mean to me a lot. I remember being at your house with S* S* sometimes, remember being in Brownies with you, but mostly I remember more of middle school and the social jostling and unrest."

we will see.

what i want to know is that she realizes what she did. or that she's unhappy. or her husband cheats on her. or that she's shunned from her synagogue for some scandal.

or. hell. that she's fine. but says she is sorry.

who knows.

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