No Hard Feelings (Diéresis) is not a typical testimonial book about bullying. It goes much further. Elena de Juan García’s literary debut (Girona, 2004) transcends the personal experience marked by harassment, social isolation, and digital violence that she suffered during her last year of high school, becoming a profound philosophical reflection on the anatomy of evil, dignity, and forgiveness.
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In her essay, the author dedicates a chapter to each of her aggressors to analyze the motivations behind their actions, supported by the theories of thinkers like Nietzsche, Aristotle, or Plato. At just 22 years old, she signs a mature essay where philosophy becomes a tool for understanding and writing a sublimation of pain. “Resentment is simply what ties us to a past we try to leave behind,” says De Juan in a book that does not seek revenge but understanding; that does not intend to justify harm but to transcend it.
What would you like readers to take away after reading the book?
I believe everyone can find refuge within the pages of the book precisely because it is not a testimonial narrative nor does it only talk about bullying or my experience, but about tough situations we all go through. We have all said at some point, “If I hadn’t lived through that experience, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.” And although it often sounds like a cliché, I think we rarely stop to think about why it’s true, what lessons that experience left us, and how it changed us.
When and why did you decide to turn what you suffered into an essay?
I started writing at that time, when I was 17, almost as a form of daily release. There is a gift that only the passage of time gives you: perspective. When you are suffering pain, you are unable to see anything beyond the wound. I kept returning to the document, which I had saved on my computer, and ended up rewriting it almost entirely because I no longer recognized myself in the resentment with which I had written some parts. Without realizing it, I had forgiven them.
Resentment gives an illusion of protection, as if being angry were a way to set boundaries
You talk about the aggressors, but not from anger, rather from an attempt to understand what happened.
I locked myself in one question: “Why?”. I needed to understand what leads someone to consciously harm others. In the end, I reached a conclusion that runs throughout the book: “No one who knows themselves to be joyfully whole ever needs to put others down to sustain themselves.” When harm is deliberate, it almost never comes from fullness but from some kind of lack.
The title is a clear statement of intent, have you never felt resentment towards them?
Yes, I felt resentment and a lot of helplessness too. Resentment towards others and also a bit towards myself, and I asked myself: “Why don’t you stand up to them?”. But when you are inside the situation, it’s not that simple. It’s the group against you, you are alone, vulnerable, and at that moment you just try to survive without letting your guard down. Over time, I abandoned resentment.
How?
More than a state, it is a daily practice that you have to keep working on. Resentment gives an illusion of protection that seems to hold you up, even gives you dignity, as if being angry were a way to set boundaries and, with that, respect yourself. But letting go is not about stopping feeling it, but avoiding that resentment defining how you remember what you lived or determining how you see yourself.
Has resentment ever conditioned you?
During my first year at university, I was happy to have left school and not see them again. Despite being an outgoing person, when I arrived at university, I found it hard to open up because I felt judged even without reason. That is one of the aftereffects of resentment, or what remains of it when you start to let go. In the end, I understood that it doesn’t protect us; it simply hurts us more.
You are not defined by what others do to you, nor by what they make you feel
There are moments in the book where you show some compassion towards them, can the aggressor’s attitude be understood without justifying it?
If you try to understand where everything comes from, you end up feeling some compassion, even if it’s hard. Again, without justifying anything. When you reflect on what you lived, you also start to see things from another place and appreciate how fortunate you are. In that sense, I feel very privileged.
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You also discuss the transition between forgiveness and forgetting.
I always say it is very important not to forget what happened to you. Sometimes people try to manage pain from there, as if not remembering made it disappear. What you must forget is the place that something painful or something that does not define you as a person has occupied in your story. Because you are not defined by what others do to you, nor by what they make you feel. And then, inevitably, when you do this exercise, it goes hand in hand with forgiveness.
One of the aggressors has apologized to you.
Yes. During the bullying episode, she called me in tears saying she couldn’t take it anymore and felt bad for everything they were doing. She forgave in the shadows but then didn’t speak to me in person and continued with the dynamics and was part of that silence, which is complicit. Recently, I ran into her and she told me they hadn’t treated me well at school and that she felt very bad for having participated. I told her not to worry, that I forgave her.
And the rest of the aggressors?
They haven’t apologized, but I forgave them anyway because I don’t need it. You don’t need an apology to forgive because forgiveness is also an act of love towards yourself. It is allowing yourself to let go, to release, and to let your memories define you.
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Your teachers identified the bullying but told you not to let it affect you.
Bullying is not talked about as it should be, nor is it addressed properly. In the case of schools, especially when they know something is happening and teachers have been informed, they should intervene immediately. When nothing is done, you end up being an important accomplice. There was a time when even my mother had to work remotely from the car, parked at the school gates.
How do you think bullying influenced the construction of your identity at such an early stage of your life?
I was lucky to have a family that supported me a lot and two friends like María and Catalina, who also have a chapter in the book. But not everyone has that network, nor manages to talk about it in time out of fear or shame. And that can lead to very serious consequences. We have seen recent cases of suicide that prove it.
My mother had to work remotely from the car, parked at the school gates
In my case, it greatly undermined my self-esteem and left certain aftereffects, although over time I was able to work on and heal them. Writing helped me a lot in that process and, as my philosophy teacher, who wrote the book’s foreword, said, “writing is the best form of sublimation of pain.”
What would you say today to that girl you were or to any minor who might be going through bullying?
I would affirm things that at that moment she might not see because pain occupies your whole mind. I would remind her that she is strong and brave, even if she doesn’t feel that way now. And above all, not to let others define who she is.
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