<font color=green> I hope you don't mind that I am taking my time with my answers. I just have to take this slowly, as it can easily get overwhelming.</font color=green>

Is anybody "nobody"? What does it feel like to be nobody?
<font color=green>Rationally, I would tell you that everybody is somebody and no one is nobody. However, on a feeling level I still felt like I was nobody, I didn't count, and really had no right to even exist. I always slipped through the cracks and wasn't even noticed. Jumping ahead through the rest of my school years, I was just one of those 'Air Force Brats' and there was no reason for anybody to care because I would just be gone in a couple of years anyway so might as well be someone else's problem. I was quiet, didn't get into trouble, didn't ever stand out. Why should anyone care? I went to a high school that had 4000 students. What's one more? </font color=green>

What would have made it "worth the effort"? Is there anyway to get that "worth"?
<font color=green>If anyone had ever really responded to me or cared. Even as an adult I have usually felt worthless because nothing I do is actually worth anything to everybody. I raise goats and sheep and I knit and I play the recorder. Who cares? That is one of the reasons why I am going back to school. Maybe if I had a degree I would be worth something. Maybe then people would listen to me sometimes or care what I had to say.</font color=green>

Referring to "nobody" and "didn't ever", are these possibly inaccurate? <font color=green>of course</font color=green> Is it possible there were others who tried, but for some reason didn't fulfill your needs at the time? Is it possible that you might have contibuted to your isolation in some ways? By not talking for instance? Or rejecting sympathy? <font color=green>yup</font color=green>

Is it true you did know better? What made you qualified at that age to "know better?" <font color=green> Not always. I tried so hard to be what my mother expected, but sometimes my best just wasn't good enough. I was very sensitive, and took the slightest correction pretty hard. But my sister always got more approval because she never questioned anything, and I tried to think for myself. I still think that I was right to want independence, even though my parents didn't approve of me wanting it.</font color=green>

Within the friends group, what was your role? In what way did they sympathize with you? How did they try to help, or empower you? How did you try to empower yourself?
<font color=green>The girl who was in my second grade class, I'm pretty sure probably thought I was a pest, but she was too nice and nonassertive herself to tell me to go away. I clung to her - it's really embarassing. The boy who sometimes walked home with me tried to show me a way to escape the bullies. I had absolutely no concept of empowering myself - I completely bought into the victim role and didn't see any other options.</font color=green>

What part of the new school experiences could have been carried over from the previous school? Were you expecting to be teased and bullied, or did you feel you had finally escaped?
<font color=green>I had no expectation of anything being different. I was full of anger and had no idea what to do with it - my parents would never approve of expressing it, and I was hurt about leaving my friends behind, and decided not to try to make new friends that I would just have to leave again. My parents approved of that decision. There were people I could have called friends at times, and some that I did refer to as friends (sometimes my parents reminded me that I had decided not to have friends, implying that they would rather I stuck to that), but pretty much all I was to them was a charity case. They might have been nice to me because they were nice people and didn't want to be rude, but I don't know why they would have wanted me as a friend. Most of the time I was simply left alone. I didn't start to learn about real friendships until getting internet. After developing some internet friendships I have been able to generalize it to some real life situations. </font color=green>

<font color=purple>"The real problem of mental life is not why some people become insane, but rather why most avoid insanity." -Erich Fromm</font color=purple>