USA. In Kindergarten I punched a kid on the bus for taking “my seat.” I remember being surprised I had done it. I wasn’t thinking about it or intending to do

USA. In Kindergarten I punched a kid on the bus for taking “my seat.” I remember being surprised I had done it. I wasn’t thinking about it or intending to do it. The bus driver wrote me up, and I had a talk with the principal the next day. The talk was confusing for me and I was a “good kid” so it was a little traumatic as well. What I took away from it was that it was never okay to hit. Well, that meant I didn’t hit back, either. I was bullied a little in elementary school after that, always physically; mostly by one guy who was older and bigger by virtue of being held back a year. There was one older girl who tried to verbally bully me when she saw me but I didn’t understand what she was saying so it never really bothered me. Things were really bad in middle school. My parents divorced, which was devastating to me, and I was in a new school district with all new kids. And I didn’t hit back. I was bullied constantly on the bus by a big kid and his toady. I had a few more bullies at school as well, and when I moved again (same district/school) I had bullies in my neighborhood so I got bullied by some of the same kids even away from school. Everything combined put me in a place where standing up for myself wasn’t possible emotionally, and the few times I tried it made things worse. There is a lot of truth to “just standing up for yourself” to end bullying, but that just shifts it onto the next victim; and it wasn’t something that could help me at the time. For no reason I understand, maybe school policy, the bullying stopped being physical in the ninth grade, and for the rest of high school it stopped completely.