I've been going thru threads giving hearts to those who don't have them

[Tree-Hugger]

75. #1) You are amazingly awesome

#2) Elizabeth Esther is a bitter old dick.

I already shared one memory on MadFloridian's post of Valentine's hearts - February 14th was called Friendship Day in my High School. You could buy a lollipop bouquet for your friends and it would be delivered to their homeroom on the 14th. For four years, I was the only person in my homeroom who did not receive lollipops. It was always obvious since the teacher would call out each name one-by-one and I'd be the only one left. I'd do my best to remain brave and would bury my red face in a book until the bell rang. To this day, that still affects me. I remember it on every single Valentine's Day and it still stings.

I was bullied from first grade to 12th grade, college, and so on. Grade school was the worst and to say I was tortured is an understatement. I was the one kid left out of everything, picked on and picked last. I didn't get Christmas cards. I didn't get Valentine's cards. It felt awful. The feeling of being rejected and unloved all the time has stayed with me today. It didn't toughen me up. It didn't give me a good sense of what's fair. No. It made me bitter. It made me violent. It made me unable to trust anyone - an issue I still struggle with at 35 years of age. It made me paranoid that people are always staring or laughing at me (and sometims they still are, which doesn't help). It completely fucked up my inner dialog.

I would love to tell all of my former classmates that they need to thank Jesus that I grew up in a loving family and had one friend outside of school and discovered David Bowie, whose music literally saved me. I think the stable home life, knowing I wasn't coming home to be bullied some more, saved me. I can say with certainty that I would have either harmed my classmates or myself if I didn't have that sense of stability in my life. I frequently had fantasies of stabbing people, setting the class on fire, beating my 5th grade teacher (she was as bad as the kids) to a bloody pulp.....but I left them as fantasies. Elizabeth Esther lacks perspective....she is selfish and unable to see how something as simple as being skipped on Valentine's Day can damage a person.