School and Fear

Before I started college I grew up in a very small town and went to a small high school where everyone knew each other and everyone gossiped. I went through school from kindergarten to my senior year hating every second of it. I was bullied the whole time I was in school. The bullying started in elementary school where I was picked on for being a tomboy and the way I dressed, then middle school where I was picked on for having acne, the way I dressed and being considered weird and then when I hit high school I was targeted for everything I did, even if that was nothing.
I was told year after year it would get better, people would grow up and leave me alone, but that never happened. It got so bad at one point that I was corned one day by three girls who said they were going to jump me because quote "You looked at me funny and dated my boyfriend a year ago." The fact is I didn't know any of these girls, all I had done was briefly date a boy. It didn't matter that I hadn't talked to him in a year or that I no longer had an interest in him, they were just angry and singled me out.
When I came home that day and cried about it, my mom wanted to call the school but I wouldn't let her. Interestingly enough I ended up in the principal's office the next day being accused of slander and assaulting those three girls when they had it on camera that they were following me and cornering me and I wasn't doing anything to them. At that point I wished I had let my mom call the school.
The reason I'm recalling all of this for my blog is because I realized something today. Perhaps my aversion to school has to do with the fact that I'm still afraid of the judgement. Perhaps I'm still afraid of being picked on, of feeling alone, of being the "weirdo." I think that even though I'm in a completely new place, with new faces and no one has tried to single me out in a negative way, that scared high school girl is still in the back of my mind telling me that I need to watch my back. Telling me that school is a place to dread because of how people will treat me.
For me, the bullying never left me; the words, the stares, all of it still stays with me, I remember them all. I don't say any of this for sympathy or to bring some awareness to the perils of public school but to make some sense out of why I feel the way I do today. If some wayward high school student were to read this and second guess the way they treated their peers that would be a plus, but for now I just want to delve into my own psyche and figure out what is it exactly about school that I can't seem to stand.