injurious

As a child¹, I cracked my skull twice, got thrashed to within a few feet of my life by teachers and parents more than a dozen times, lost a toenail, had hundreds of scratches and cuts², and got into a lot of fights.

Now, a decade and a half later, I don't really remember those things as painful. The scattered scars are curiously remembered, and the stories fondly told.

What does still hurt and sting, is the humiliation and abandonment by peers³ and friends³ as I tried to fit in as a too-clever, un-coordinated boy from a little too far away⁴. Bored, rejected, lost in strange cultures, and well into university, very afraid of people and not being liked.

I'm very reluctant to reflect on whether any of those things apply to me now, because of the dread of finding out that they do.

Footnotes:

1. Fat, awkward, and a little bit too clever
2. Though, weirdly, no broken bones
3. So-called
4. I was born on the east coast, grew up in a rural dorpie in the middle of the country, and moved to the west coast when I was 8.