Trigger warning: This story contains themes of suicide that some readers may find distressing.
Bullying can cause deep emotional scars, leading to lasting trauma that affects mental health well into adulthood. The bitterness from these experiences often lingers for decades, but sometimes, finding closure can help both the victim and the bully heal. Palmer Michael (@sneakersandhobbes) experienced this firsthand when he reconnected with his childhood bully on social media, leading to an unexpected and heartwarming outcome.
Representative Image Source: Sad businessman sitting head in hands on the bed in the dark bedroom with low light environment, dramatic concept. (Getty Images)
While Michael usually shares cat videos on TikTok, in October 2023, he posted a deeply emotional video that garnered over 3 million views. He shared how, back in 2013, he stumbled upon a Facebook post by Jeff, a former high school classmate—and the same person who had bullied him for years. Seeing Jeff’s name brought back painful memories, prompting Michael to reach out to him with a letter.
Representative Image Source: A young man is feeling depressed and thinking about the bad news he is reading online through his smartphone (Getty Images)
In the following slides on TikTok, Michael shared the screengrabs of his interactions with Jeff via text messages. He started off by writing, “I am sure you remember who I am – Michael Stright,” and went on to add, “You bullied me all the way through high school until I had to drop out ‘cause you ended up in one of my classes in grade 12. I don’t know if you realize how much hell you and Andrew Crooks put me through.”
He added that back in those days, bullying wasn’t something that people paid much attention to, but now the scenario has changed. Michael wrote how “horrible memories of him teasing [Michael] day after day after day” haunted him to this day. Expressing his angst further, Michael told Jeff, “Did you know that I tried to commit suicide three times because of the s**t you put me through.”
Representative Image Source: Unhappy Teenage Boy Outdoors At High School Being Teased Or Bullied (Getty Images)
“I am not looking for pity now that you’re older. I want you to go back in time and see who you were once to me.” He added that if Jeff had kids, then he hoped that they never had to go through bullying because it’s “horrible.” “I am sending you this message to bury the past once and for all. Confronting you after all these years feels good and I have finally said what I wanted to say to you so many years ago,” he concluded.
To his surprise, Jeff responded with an equally long message thanking Michael for writing to him. He asserted that whatever he did, his intentions weren’t malicious, however, that didn’t matter because his actions ended up hurting Michael, and “nobody deserves to feel like that.” In a dramatic twist, Jeff revealed that he himself contemplated suicide a couple of times and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. He added that he was happy that Michael didn’t commit suicide because of an “insensitive classmate” that Jeff once was. “I was an idiot when I thought I was just being ‘cool,’” he confessed.
Representative Image Source: Schoolboy being bullied in school corridor (Getty Images)
“I hope confronting me about this does make you feel better because you deserve that. I will never be able to apologize enough to undo the damage I did, but I will be grateful to you for having the courage to show me who I truly was,” Jeff wrote before admitting, “I am ashamed and disgusted at myself, I hope that you don’t encounter anyone else like me again.”
Touched to his core by Jeff's response, Michael replied wrote back, “Bullying has now been brought to light and it’s good to see that people now take it seriously,” before adding, “The fact that you wrote back to me really means the world to me.” “It takes a big person to admit mistakes they did in the past and to apologize for them,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough for writing me back.” Responding to Michael's video, their common friend Lisa (@lisajmelanson) commented, “I went to school with Michael and Jeff, both grew into the most amazing caring loving men and 2 of my favorite humans! Love you both, RIP Jeffy.”
Image Source: TikTok | @kierakateb
Image Source: TikTok | @momma_alyssa
The video also triggered emotional responses from across the globe, with many users sharing their own experiences with bullying. @thevintagewargamer professed, “That feeling of being bullied relentlessly has never left me, I'm 42 now. I cannot or will never forgive them. They took my formative years away.” @tracifunk942 told Michael that he was quite “brave” to send that message and that he was a special person to do that. @syvidalofficial said, “I’m so happy you received the closure you needed so badly; it sounds like he did too.”
You can follow Palmer Michael (@sneakersandhobbes) on TikTok for more heartwarming videos.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.