The Year 8 Embankment
At my secondary school in suburban Melbourne in 1993, Jason was a six-foot terrifying force of violence. I was an asthmatic thirteen-year-old with thick glasses and an accordion case. Every Friday after the final bell, he and his gang would corner me behind the cricket nets, kick my schoolbag into the mud, and shove me down the gravel embankment.
I had nightmares about that gravel well into my thirties. When you are humiliated as an adolescent, the shame bakes into your posture. You walk into job interviews with rounded shoulders; you expect hostility from the world.
I spent decades fantasizing about revenge: seeing him fail, seeing him destitute, walking up to him in an expensive suit and laughing at his misfortune.
The Café in Carlton
In June 2023, through an alumni Facebook group, I discovered he was working as a carpenter in Carlton. I did something reckless: I messaged him and asked to meet for coffee at a small café near Princes Park.
I expected a hulking brute who would smirk or deny it. Instead, the man who walked through the glass doors had trembling hands, thinning grey hair, and the sunken eyes of someone who had spent fifteen years battling severe depression and divorce.
We sat across from each other with two flat whites. For three minutes, the silence was suffocating. Then he looked at my face, lowered his head into his rough hands, and began to weep.
The Monster Behind the Monster
'Callum,' he whispered, 'I don't expect you to forgive me. When I was thirteen, my stepfather beat me with a leather work belt every Thursday night when he came home drunk from the pub. By Friday morning, I was so filled with terror that the only way I didn't kill myself was making someone else feel as helpless as I was. You were gentle, and I destroyed your peace because I hated my own life.'
In that single revelation, the cartoon villain I had harbored in my mind for three decades dissolved into smoke. Standing before me was just another battered child who had passed on his torment because no one had ever protected him.
I reached across the laminate table, placed my hand on his shoulder, and said: 'Jason, the gravel embankment is over. I forgive you.' That day, two boys finally graduated from school. On Solas Haven, I release that old terror into the starlight.
Related Memoirs & Chronicles
The Sixteen-Year-Old with Scissors in Toronto: Cutting My Father in Half
The Burned Letter in Detroit: The Lesson of the Fifty-Five Gallon Drum
The Stolen Fifty Dollars in Brooklyn: The Tin Box on the Dressing Table
Is there a letter lingering in your silence?
Do not let your unsaid words weigh down your heart. Release them to the eternal living constellation of Solas Haven.
Enter the Sanctuary & Release a Star