When I was 11ish l I was pretty shy and awkward and a lot of other kids didn't like me much. I was also the first kid in my class to get breasts by about 3 years. I'd been bullied before that, but the situation escalated to the point where a group of older (13-14?) girls chased me into a bathroom stall and, uh, threatened me with scissors until I took off my clothes so they could see if I was stuffing my bra. It would up being a pretty big scandal in my school but this was still the 90s so the general attitude from the adults around me was that this was somehow my fault for not sticking up for myself or that this wouldn't have happened in the first place if I was just better at making friends. My mom's advice was to find the most popular girl in school and mimic her entirely.

The 'resolution' was that a school psychologist sat me in a room with the ringleader of those girls and she told me she was also bullied and the psychologist made me hug her.

I spent a lot of time after that chasing this idea that there was something I could somehow do with my personality to make myself more worthy of compassion and respect and it was always in the back of my mind whenever I was interacting with people. It didn't help that I was still awkward and anxious now so I continued to be bullied on some level until I went away to college.

Now friendship feels like this massive chore to me and I'm terrible at keeping them. Sometimes I think the only friendships I have are out of guilt.