DISCLAIMER!!!: Long text.

Hello.

I started therapy at the beginning of this year, a decision I made after realizing how an emotionally abusive relationship was still affecting me and I realized I needed help as I am alone and had no one to talk to about the things that had happened and my confusing left-over feelings for the guy.
In therapy my past with being bullied for about 9 years (age 5-15) came up as well a couple of sessions in and I realized how much that has to do with the person I am today at 21 years old. I also realized how often I have nightmares about those people who bullied me (every other night pretty much).
This is something my family of course was aware of but I never dared to tell anyone how mean my classmates could be and was mostly considered by family as really shy and introverted at school, that it was me who pushed the others away which is true now but wasn't the case back then.

I would try really hard everyday, I wasn't even shy until the age of 9 when I started becoming more and more introverted as my classmates would freeze me out and make fun of me constantly. I managed to still make a friend at the age of 9 but she had another friend who "stole" her back from me and said I should leave her and her best friend alone and it had taken so much in me and so much time to just befriend that one girl that I gave up there and then. I managed to make friends with a boy in the class though who ended up getting bullied as well probably because he was friends with me. He stopped talking to me but kept being bullied for years until he ironically became one of the worst bullies when we came in to our teens. He would write mean things to me openly on my facebook-posts even for no reason at all. But mostly it was the girls who bullied me, the boys didn't do much which is something that has caused me to have great problems making female friends now as I automatically see girls as people who backstab each other and bully others constantly as that as what they would do - constant trash-talking behind each others backs and judging others in a very mean and shallow way. One of them even started a rumor about me once that got the boys to start bullying me quite intensively for about 4 or 5 months. I eventually dared to tell my mother and then my teacher who got really angry with them and talked to them several times and then got them to apologize to me, something that appeared to be very sincere and they never bullied me again so I forgave them although I can sometimes feel now that it was still ****** of them not to take a stand when the others were mean instead of doing nothing.

From age ~ 11 to 15 I started trying really hard to befriend my female classmates but I had started getting so introverted and shy that I couldn't even talk because I had no idea what to say, I would go through every single day not saying a word all day and it's still the same TO THIS DAY but at work. They now had a new reason to freeze me out: I was boring because I had nothing to say. At times they would be nice to me only to say something really mean and push me out of the group again as soon as I started to trust them, almost like some kind of game they had. It actually reminds me of the way my abusive ex would act - the one I mentioned at the start... And for some reason it always hit me so hard because I wanted so badly to believe that we could be friends. I didn't dare to tell anyone so I kept forcing myself on them especially on breaks and on the way to lunch outdoors were family could spot us so that I wouldn't look bullied because I would be walking around alone - this because my teacher from year 1 to 3 had commented on the fact that I was always alone on breaks and that I should not be because it was sad, though the reason I was often alone was that the other kids did not want to play with me. This made everything worse as the girls would get annoyed with me for not leaving them alone and they would start yelling at me to go get some friends and stop following them around. Despite all this I was very optimistic and confident on the inside and I had and still have a very good life at home with my family which helped too + I had plenty of internet-friends and expressed myself a lot via social media but at 14 my mindset suddenly switched and I got really negative and - in lack of a better word to use - depressed. I also lost my female internet friends who would all eventually slip away from me, my 2 closest female internet- friends obviously slipping away on purpose for reasons I still don't know and losing them was tough too. I felt betrayed and even more alone than before and started suffering pretty severe anxiety almost everyday but told no one. I also stopped going outside and started isolating myself a lot when I wasn't at school. Lost a lot of energy too, not much has changed since unfortunately.
The teachers were never of much help as they would always blame me for having no friends, one even trying to force me to go see the school counselor to talk about why i'm not like the others to the point where she'd almost grab me by the arm to drag me there but I refused. Needless to say it partially felt like I had been defeated when I started counseling this year, I felt like a loser for no longer being able to fight alone, like I gave in to those people and agreed that yes - there is something wrong with me.

When at 16 and moved on to a new school I decided to try and change and leave my past behind me and it worked at first.
Everyone was new and we were a gang of 3 who knew no one and we decided to stick together, a few weeks into the first year and we were 7 instead of 3. I was still very shy but did my best in trying to socialize a bit more and by laughing and smiling a lot instead to not appear as *****y. A few girls from my former class was still around at a different school nearby though and on facebook after school they'd text me and I realized that they were not going to stop trying to make me more insecure so eventually I just made a new account and didn't add them. Good riddance.
I would notice shortly though that my newfound friends started to become closer and doing more things outside of school that I wasn't invited to while in the beginning I would be invited to everything. But they would still be cool and consider me a part of the group, though when I heard them talking about things they'd done during the weekend at the lunchtable that of course hurt my feelings and instead of trying harder like texting them after schoolhours which I didn't... I pulled away in a panicked fear that they would start getting annoyed with me like my former classmates had for hanging on to them and I liked them too much to wanna cause them to hate me so I left them alone... logic.
I regret this A LOT now as we're all still friends on social media and I so often wish my insecurity hadn't gotten the best of me and sometimes I just wanna text them to say hi and maybe try to become friends again but it feels like it would be too strange.

I've never really been sure if what I went through can count as "bullying" for some reason, what defines bullying? I feel silly because some people get beat up for example or pushed around, no one was ever physical with me though. One of the things that never stopped happening though was that they'd steal articles of my outdoors-clothing only to throw it on the ground when walking from the place we had lunch at and back to school. I'd find my gloves for example thrown in a ditch or just laying on the sidewalk. I even had my jacket stolen and hidden once. Took months to find it. I still feel like it's my own fault for getting bullied. I should have been more like everyone else. That there is something wrong with me.

I guess what i'm trying to accomplish with this post is to just get it out of my system... maybe get some understanding. I still feel like the same 14/15 year old girl on the inside that I was and I wish I could leave all that behind once and for all and stop seeing myself through the eyes of my bullies. Therapy hasn't helped much yet and i've heard several people throughout the years after my years of being bullied that they went through the exact same thing and didn't have friends but now all of a sudden they're REALLY social and have lots of friends and i'm like ??? ?? ? Because they never have any explanation how and that makes me feel even shittier because I still haven't been able to accomplish that like they seemed to have done just out of the blue.

I'm sorry for the long post of sad whining lol. I know people have had it way worse in their lives but I hope someone can maybe relate and see that they're not the only one because I used to think for many years that I was the only one who didn't have any friends and that someone can maybe give some advice. Thanks for reading.