The Painful Lasting Effects Bullying Has Had on My Social Life

I still battle hesitancy and social anxiety

I was one of those kids who was bullied — the awkward, nerdy type. The kind that others couldn’t resist picking on. It didn’t matter if I stayed hunched down, slumped over, and stuck to the corners of life. Somewhere on me was a neon sign that must have read “kick me.” The bullies sure had some type of radar or sixth sense I was ripe for the picking.

I’d seen how this worked firsthand as a farm kid. Chickens were notoriously cruel. There would be a pecking order that ranged from alpha hens or roosters down to the pestered bottom-feeders.

The hen or two on the bottom of that nasty social order lived terrorized. Most were skinny, nearly starved, as their roast’s robust members pushed them away from the feed and pulled their neck feathers. Soon their upper bodies and head were almost bare. Dried blood often spotted their upper regions, where others repeatedly jab them with sharp beaks. They scurried to the edges of the coop, sleeping in the worst spots.

This same principle of a pecking order appears in other places of our social life. It’s common among prison populations and on too many playgrounds across the US.

I dreaded the hour-long school bus ride home. Nowadays, most school systems don’t transport younger and older students together, but that wasn’t the case when I went to school.

In rural mid-Michigan in the mid-’70s, most teenagers didn’t have the luxury of a car. Everyone aged six to nineteen who lived in the same few-mile area had to spend each afternoon crowded together in the cramp quarters of a school bus. Oh, did this provide the perfect breeding ground for bullying.

I was one of those extra-sensitive nerdy types who misread social cues and took myself and others way too seriously. The budding sociopaths could smell my vulnerability and moved right in.

Instead of giving me a wedgie, someone had the bright idea of unsnapping the then-popular one-piece bodysuits I used to wear and then they pulled loose the back end so that it…

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