I was a bully to two kids when I was in high school. In both cases, I knew I was being cruel, but I felt justified. There was also social pressure to marginalize these two, specifically within my friend group. Which caused some group-think about the whole thing.
The first of them was a kid who liked hanging out with us, but we didn't like hanging out with him much. We'll call him "Jared" (not his real name) He didn't have any particularly bad personality traits, but Jared wasn't smart. And we were a group of stuck-up nerds who took pride in the fact that we were in AP classes and that we "were very smart". We looked down on him and were frustrated by having to explain things to him. It didn't help that Jared was also slow to pick up social cues. And the frustration turned into cruelty. Slowly, but surely, we became meaner and meaner to him. And, when he wouldn't leave, we got even meaner. This went on for at least 2 years.
As for the second person, for me, it was mostly social pressure. We'll call him Lex (also, not his real name). He did something - to this day, I'm not 100% sure what - that made a number of people in our social group mad. And he was kind of weird and socially awkward...but, our whole group was if had been honest with ourselves. Again, we were the nerdy kids who liked to tell other kids how smart we were. In other schools, we probably would have been bullied more. At any rate, the casual cruelty we displayed toward Jared was already established by that point and it didn't take much social pressure to make bullying Lex, who WAS a core part of our friend group until then, into social obligation. It worked very much the same way Twitter does today, just on a much smaller scale.
This went on for probably close to a year with the Lex. Longer for some of the others. And, eventually, we did expel Jared from our group. At some point, our awfulness reached a threshold that he could no longer put up with. It really hurts when I think about how much I probably hurt him. We never did anything violent to either of them, but the name-calling, gossiping behind their backs, gaslighting, casual disrespect, and social isolation we inflicted on them was beyond unforgivable.
There was probably a number of things that added up to why I changed. But from my recollection, the biggest or final bit, was reading "Shadow Dance", a self-help book largely based on Carl Jung's work. That got me deep into Jung and psychology generally, but also made me confront what I was doing in many areas of my life. That included reflecting on how I was treating my friend, Lex, and how I had treated Jared. I realized that I was projecting my own pain, insecurity, and fear of loneliness onto them. I saw that I was being cruel out of fear that I "might be next" in my social group, especially to Lex.
I made myself stop treating Lex badly. I also told my other friends to lay off him. Some of them didn't want to, but I learned that my fear that I would "be next" was all in my head. By calling them out, I also was declaring that I couldn't be controlled by the fear that made our group so cruel to these two individuals. Both me and the other people in this group were a long way from becoming kind, good people, but it was a step in the right direction, at least for me.
I ran into Jared on the bus one day and came and sat next to him. He looked surprised and, maybe I imagined it, but there might have been fear and resentment too. I deserved worse than that. I apologized to him for how mean I had been over the years. He gave me a brush-off "Yeah, I forgive you." But I could feel the insincerity of it. I told him it's okay if he couldn't. I didn't necessarily deserve it. But I wanted him to know that I was really, truly sorry for what I had done, and that if he wanted to say anything to me I would listen. I don't remember what he said to that, but I remember the bitterness in his voice. The damage we had done was lasting and there was nothing I could do about it anymore.
Somehow, I managed to salvage my friendship with Lex. We even ended up being roommates later in life. I think he still carries some baggage from high school, but he's mostly a well-adjusted person who smokes a lot of pot. We still talk once in a long while. We still consider each other friends.
As for my other "friends" in that group. Only one of them is on my Facebook friends list. The rest, I don't keep in touch with at all. I don't know if they ever became kinder or better people. I don't think it's my job to make them or even to check on whether they did.
I can't fix the damage my bullying did in high school. In fact, I don't think I've even seen it as clear as I see it now, all written out like this. I was a really, really mean high schooler. It took me a long time to be less mean. Even after apologizing to Jared, I still harbored a lot of mean thoughts towards other people I went to school with that I didn't know very well. I was never that popular in high school, but I also wasn't bullied that much. A little, yes. But in retrospect, maybe the real reason I was never that popular is because other people could feel that mean, angry darkness in me that I was not-so-successfully trying to keep under wraps.
I'm glad I changed. I'm glad I can be confident that I'm a kinder, better, less arrogant person than I was in high school. But I'm sad that the route I took to get there involved being as hurtful as I was back then.