At one point I began to dissociate and people stopped bullying me but I was no longer capable of having close friends.Īdditionally, I am from the US but my parents are from Italy. I became a complete social pariah, lost basically all of the friends I had because they didn't want to be associated with the 'target.' The social isolation that I felt throughout all of this persisted throughout middle school and to an extent high school. When I was around 9, I started to be bullied at school.
The earlier parts of my childhood, from what I can remember, were just fine. I would just tell myself 'some people get x and y more severe form of abuse from their families, all of this is just normal behavior.' Until recently I invalidated all of this trauma and thought it was normal family behavior. I've been running from some difficult childhood experiences over the past 10-15 years (23 atm) that massively affected the development of my sense of self, my identity and my ability to have healthy close relationships with people.
