Heh.
From pretty early on in Kintergarten I was the target for bullying. Most of my grade left me alone because I was weird and acted out a lot (not someone to bother, I guess?), but there was a group of 4 or 5 boys in the grade above me who went after me almost every day. Nothing physical, but insults and verbal abuse were pretty much an every day thing. I reacted physically because I didn't really have any other way to defend myself, and so I was the problem, of course, and ended up in the principal's office a few times a year in the good years. If we hadn't had a new principal almost every year, I probably would've gotten thrown out, but since I started fresh with each new one, I never got to that point.
My parents were pretty much useless at that point. My mom thought I had "socialization problems" and put me into a little group therapy program with a bunch of kids who had actual problems. Yeah, real smart. Oh, and she also got me IQ tested. Turned out I could be doing middle school in 2nd or 3rd grade. But that clearly had nothing to do with my problems :rolli: so she never did anything about it except file the IQ report somewhere. And then she went back to trying to fix my "inability to socialize." I wonder why I can't stand ISFJs...
My first grade teacher actively encouraged other kids in my grade to pick on me because I made life difficult for him by being smart enough to need more than the basic curriculum, and by sometimes knowing things he didn't and pointing out that he was wrong. So in 1st grade bullying by my own grade started too. Again, nothing physical, but anyone who thinks that only girls can do the whole "isolate and attack" thing has never seen how nasty boys can be.
That started to die down in second grade because my teacher was, although terrible at knowing what to do with me, nice enough (she was probably an ISFJ too, so she tried. She was just kind of clueless). This was the year I got into a serious fight with the group of older boys, and although I don't remember exactly what I did, that was what earned the group therapy crap and the IQ test.
Third and fourth grade weren't terrible, because I had gotten used to the older kids, and my grade were fine to me again. I even had a few friends. Third grade I even had a good teacher. Fourth grade, I had the teacher I'd had for second grade again. The bullying was probably a little lighter, but mostly I think I'd just put up a wall to protect myself.
Fifth grade was pretty good until the end, when 3 boys in my grade decided to go after me again. That was only in the last month of school, though, and I had a great teacher, so I managed pretty well.
After fifth grade I moved, and it started all over again. In 6th grade one kid so obviously had it in for me that, without me doing anything, he was moved out of all 6 classes I had with him. I actually don't remember him being that bad, though. He didn't really know how to get to me. But it was still a bad year, because the group of "friends" I made were horrible to me. Most days they would insult me and make fun of me, with the exception of one (the one who I had made friends with and joined this group because of). I don't think I ever actually cried at school that year, but only because I built a wall to protect myself.
In 7th grade there was a group of popular kids, 2 or 3 boys and 2 girls, the ring leader of which loved picking on me. Again, almost every day he insulted me, and the others followed his example. The others were actually not that bad except when he was there, and one of them was actually really nice the rest of the time, but groupthink'll do that...
I always responded by telling them that if they were going to pick on me, they might as well learn to do it well, because it'd been done to me by people much better at it, and I think I even convinced myself of it, but it wasn't true. The last time I cried at school was toward the end of 7th grade, I think.
At the end of 7th grade the leader of that group moved, and it mostly ended. I still got picked on occasionally, but not often, and it was nothing that I hadn't learned to handle. I made a few actual friends for the first time in 4 or 5 years, and actually had a decent year.
The way I survived was basically to shut down. I normally feel things very, very strongly, and am much more sensitive than you would expect from an INTx. So what happened was that over the course of those 8 years I built more and more of a fake INTJ personality (one which I believed as much as anyone else). It had all the bad sides of INTJs without the good ones, really. It was the arrogance, the "I'm too good for humanity" side of the type. When I got to high school, and especially over the last year or so, that finally fell apart.
There are 2 reasons I've mostly escaped bullying in high school so far, I think, and they're actually almost opposites. On the one hand, I learned the "INTP chameleon" trick very, very well. It's more like an invisibility cloak than a chameleon. I'm not so quiet that I get noticed. I draw attention to myself as much as a normal person would. I joke around the way a normal person would. I do everything normal, pretty much, so no one ever looks deeper. At first I found that if you decline invitations to hang out a few times, people just ignore you, but as I got better, I stopped even needing to decline them. I also hate it, because it ends up isolating you, and someone finally saw through it and made me be friends, which has helped me learn to finally stop doing this. Having a real friend for the first time last year (sophomore year) has gone a long way to help me stop using my defense mechanisms all the time.
The other is that I learned very, very well how to use my ENTJ shadow. I'm never violent with it, but I can absolutely rip someone apart verbally with it. It's a part of me I absolutely hate, but when I need it, it works. I think I've really used it at school 3 times, and all 3 the target ended up crying. Only one of those was actually necessary or deserved, and I'm sure as hell not proud of the other two, because they were directed at friends who actually cared about me, but regardless, people have seen that if they cross me, I can do that to them.
Mostly now though, I'm fairly well liked. The chameleon works. People don't know me that well, but they think they have some idea what I'm like, and since I act the way people want around them, they think I'm a reasonably cool person. No one really doesn't like me anymore. And I even have some real friends. It took 8 years of living hell, and another 3 of being almost completely isolated, but I made it out.
So Long, if you're still here/read this thread, don't worry. You can make it out alive, eventually. It's not easy, and it's not fun, but you can do it.
EDIT: Wow. Life story posted right there. Heh.