Ouch!

I was a skinny little kid being bullied, had overprotective parents whose solution to bullies was to avoid them. More isolation.

That isolation included the home environment, as one of my more astute therapists pointed out.

Come to think of it, in that isolated home, my parents then became the bullies -- I was too skinny, didn't do anything right, was always doing this when I should have been doing that, and if teachers complimented me, they'd counter with what a rotten kid I was at home.

I did find out in about third grade that I could beat up a bully who was manhandling my little brother; the bully lost a tooth. In eighth grade, I was cornered and decked two bullies.

But my underlying attitudes is that these victories are flukes and I'm still a loser.

Now I'm 58 and making slow progress becoming new (2 Cor. 5:17) and I'm debating whether I care to have the change and become "normally" socialized, or just die and be done with it until the Second Coming.