Hi Lucasgreen,

As someone that was new to any concept of a friend group I quickly found myself at the mercy of a leader of friends who, over the course of my entire school period, encouraged people to exclude me, physically oppressed me and systematically made me feel worthless through all imaginable forms of exclusion, abuse and psychological games

Also @Annah makes a really good point, that kids at school who bully or call names, may not have viewed it as such, maybe they were just ‘doing’ it rather than being conscious of it. Kids are pretty social and as a result just bandwagon with everyone else. You don’t want to be left out, so you try your darndest is to be ‘in’ rather than out.

How did I begin to move forward? Well… I guess I stopped caring so much, i decided to focus on study and working in high-school. This gave me a drive and purpose. It also made me feel like I was achieving something, at times (actually a good deal of my final years before graduation) i felt superior to others. I was quiet, reserved and kept to myself (or at least tried) and I always felt that when other students would put me down or just say stuff to my face, that I coped by saying to myself that I wasn’t just better than them, they weren’t even in my league. I carried an air of resentment against people like that. I guess that’s why I always looked serious and adults always felt I was too mature. I don’t have this outlook anymore, it was a high-school facade that did it’s job. In hindsight, it didn’t really work. Inevitably, while trying to make a stand by casting myself as separate to others, better than others i voluntarily excluded myself (which caused a bit of mental pain later on in life).

I guess I though it would be a lot easier for me, when i left school, that was it. I disconnected with everyone, in fact i never had facebook until i was 20. I secretly felt ashamed and embarrassed because after all the study, work, money earnt, i was nothing without a social life, without friends. I would sit in the middle of the food courts in malls, by myself actually contemplating why i hadn’t of just ‘gone with it’. Why did i have to be so stubborn. This is how I thought. It didn’t help either that when I got my graduating results, they were far below the average (your results are based on how you perform as a class, not as an individual). It was like all the work, all this time I had tried to ignore and more forward had failed. It took many years to get over this.

What you are going through, is what i went through, your perspective changes. I stopped looking for validation of my own qualities, my own capabilities and sought validation in myself. I stopped dwelling on mistakes i made in the past, and forgave myself. I realised that, in esscense what i had done was exclude myself so that others wouldn’t have the pleasure in doing it to me. And that I have become my own bully. When you are a loner, you cannot be ‘super loner’ since you are still by yourself hahah. But this is how I thought. I began to move forward, by simply moving forward. I guess, i stopped looking through a ‘high-school’ lens, and started seeing myself for me.

I hope this helped,
MAtty