After a few years of daily harrassment I turned to violence. It escalated the situation and led to multiple guys ganging up on me (more than once). I don't care how much you work out or how tough you think you are, very few people can effectively fight a group of people. That's why bully's run in packs.

"Just punch them in the face" is easy to say when you've never been in the situation. Punching people hurts, being punched hurts.

In my situation I was "the poor atheist kid", and my Catholic school would treat me with extreme bias. I was in the principal's office constantly for talking shit and fighting (all in self defense mind you, but nobody would ever acknowledge that, they just insisted that I was lying) and they never once called my parents.

So me fighting caused way more pain and suffering for myself. I once couldn't walk for a week and couldn't run for a month because I suffered a bruised testicle. My asshole classmates would chase me around the school yard threatening and mocking me, causing me extreme physical pain... Nobody ever got punished. Unless I fought back, of course. Then I would get punished.

I got some good hits in, and they felt damn good in the moment but at the end of the day it's usually not worth it.