It isn't exactly that I wasn't any smarter than I was/am (not especially a bright child and completely clueless as to how to handle them effectively=no social skills) so much as it is just how effing unwilling I seem to have been to do even the tiniest of self-preservational actions. Like it took about a year or more to quit believing them when they said if I just told the truth, they would not be mad. Seriously, they were always mad. What the f was wrong with me.