The memory that has stood out to me the most goes back to when I was six and in first grade. I filled in a section of the ditto paper the class was working on and I was supposed to have waited till we finished going over the rest of it. A boy next to me raised his hand and told the teacher what I had done. The teacher smacked me in the calves with a ruler. When I went home for lunch, my mother saw the red marks and asked me what had happened. I told her. Later that night, I heard her discussing it with her mother. At first, it was her intention to go to the school and confront the teacher. By morning, I heard her telling her mother that she was afraid that it would go worse for me if she did confront the teacher and/or talk to the principal. My mother didn't walk to school with me like she had told me she would.

Reading your response to Wendy's post, Darrel, these two things jumped out at me. They apply to me, too.

1) Did you decide to stop talking?

Wendy: "nobody listened to me"
Me: ditto - yes

2) Is that "them" talking, or you?

Wendy: "I wasn't worth it." - ditto
My impulse is to say "me" but it is "them."

Yes, somewhere along the line, I decided to stop talking, or at least telling my mother anything from "I don't feel well" to "Someone hurt me." To this day, I feel that no one believes me when I say something hurts me or I'm feeling like I'm going to die (when I have a panic attack.) Most of the time, I just don't say anything.