I regret not physically protecting myself when I was in middle school and high school.

When I was in middle school and high school I wasn’t a very aggressive, confrontational person. I went to public schools where I really had to be the type of person to stand up for myself and get into it with people. I didn’t and I allowed people to be completely disrespectful, rude, nasty and disgusting towards me. There were situations were I should have physically fought people to protect myself and I didn’t. I really regret not physically fighting people when I should have.

My parents never really taught me how to protect myself until junior year of high school. By then so many bad situations had already happened and it still wasn’t enough advice to defend myself like I needed to. Also I feel like my mom was always telling me about how something could be written up on my record and how I could get in trouble. I was paranoid about getting written up, suspended or expelled so I was hesitant to protect myself like I should have. I didn’t stand up for myself like I should have and I feel like having a clean record means nothing now though because now I am left with all this regret.

There are so many situations that I have regret about but there are some specific ones I still think about all the time and these are the situations where I felt I should have put my hands on other people and fought them.

1. A kid spitting on me in middle school. I told the administration and they claimed there was nothing they could do about it because it was the last day of school.
2. A girl hitting me in the face in high school. I told the administration but they did nothing about it .
3. Another girl walking about and hitting me in the face. The administration talked to her and there could have been a punishment. I regret not telling them I wanted there to be a punishment and I was way to nice about the situation.
4. Me and another girl got into it and she hit me and I hit her on her arm. She ended up getting on my back and hitting me in the face multiple times. She got written up but I regret not fighting.
5. A kid throwing pennies at the back of my head. I just ran away but I didn’t hit back like I should have.
6. Freshman year of high school A kid putting his hands on me in the lunch line and physically pushing me out of the line. I should have pushed him back and fought him but I just sat down and didn’t get food.

There are even more situations but these are just some were I really regret not putting my hands on other people and fighting them back. My mom wanted me to have a clean record but now I feel like all of that doesn’t matter because I have all this pent up anger about everything that has happened to me in high school.