Save the Drama...for Drama Class

My favorite hobby is something I like to call Dwelling in the Past. It's a fairly straightforward activity and it mostly just involves me reliving crappy experiences and getting mad about them all over again. Or instead of getting mad, I just suffocate the pain with television or food. Or both, preferably at the same time.Brent Smith was a boy I met in eighth grade. My parents had relocated my family to another neighborhood in Michigan, and although I was only minutes away from our old neighborhood, I was in a completely different school district. I won't pretend that I wasn't teased at the old school, but most people were so familiar with me that the novelty of calling me fatso had worn off. Moving to a new school meant that a whole new set of assholes could finds ways to make me feel like I was worthless because of my weight.But back to Brent Smith. I met Brent Smith in drama class, and our meeting was much to my utter and complete dismay. I had signed up for drama class thinking that I would be with my own kind; other fun, creative, and open-minded individuals. I quickly learned that drama class was the meeting place for every delinquent and pothead in my school. The class was taught by Mrs. Duffy, who was as flighty and disconnected as junior high teachers come. I honestly remember marveling in the fact that she made it to work everyday, fully clothed, and able to form complete sentences.Brent Smith took an interest in me from what seemed like the first minute of class. It started out as pretty ambiguous - he would stare me down at the beginning of class and kind of snicker and raise his eyebrows. By the time the bell would ring to signal the start of class, he'd be on his side of the room, content with something else. Later he turned more sinister, the peak of which was a day that is still burned into my memory. I had just walked into class and he was standing at the back of the room with a group of girls of which I was not very fond. I tried to scoot past him, but he had sniffed my fear like a Labrador to beef jerky. He turned, punched me in the stomach, and then pulled his hand back and marveled aloud that he didn't get his hand stuck in the flesh of my stomach.Imagine that! Punching someone and not actually being sucked into that person's subcutaneous abdominal fat. It's almost a feat of nature if you try to really wrap your mind around it. I fucking hated that kid for a really long time, and I probably still harbor some hatred for him today. The icing on the cake came later in high school though. I forget the exact circumstance of our meeting, but we ended up having a jokey conversation about some required assembly we had to attend. At the end of the conversation, he asked my name. All I could do was stare in awe at this kid.I don't need to go into some rant about how low and horrible I felt at that moment. I really think that I was more affected by my interaction with Brent Smith in high school than I had been with the Brent Smith I knew in junior high. I had spent probably three years avoiding this person because I was afraid of what he might inflict on me - physical or otherwise. For him to not even remember me was beyond any hurt I could imagined at the time.So how does a person move on after something like that? How is it that 10 and 15 years later I am still furious and completely embarrassed by the memory of some junior high punk? Will my heart or my ego ever allow me to forgive him? Will I be stuck in my junior high memory with no wherewithal to pull myself out of my anguish? How do I move on?