About two months ago me and him were sitting outside smoking, chilling or so he calls it “shoot the shit”. And how this conversation came about was he was talking about how he doesn’t care about what other people think and I expressed how I wished I was on his level and that my anxiety prevents me from speaking up. Then shortly thereafter we began to talk about our former middle school teacher (let’s call her Ms K).

I asked him about what he remembered about her and he told me what he remembered.. which prompted him to say “She was a DICK to you”. Then “she stayed yelling at you” and when he said that I suddenly had this glimpse of me sitting at my desk, vision blurry due to the tears that have welled up into my eyes. Because she yelled at me when I couldn’t understand the math problems and was having trouble with it. Ms K also used to send me to the principals office because I couldn’t make eye contact with her and said I was being “disrespectful”. Mind you she was and still is a resource teacher who had a class specifically for neurodivergent individuals. After telling my brother this bit of info he continued to listen to me, and I then began to tell him about what the other kids did to me as well and how mean they were.. on top of a teacher bullying me as well.

After I told him everything, he began to cry and say “I am so sorry”.. “that breaks my heart”. Which made me feel good because I felt seen, heard and cared for. For the first time in what felt like forever as sad as that is, but at least I opened up and had finally had someone show me genuine empathy/support..