I’ve never been in a place where people didn’t eventually treat me badly. Why?

I’m looking for outside advice about something I’ve struggled with my whole life. I constantly feel disrespected and mistreated by people in almost every environment I’ve been in, and I don’t understand why this keeps happening.

It started with my parents. Growing up, they often disrespected and emotionally abused me. They treated me like I was somehow “less than,” and I never felt valued or taken seriously by them.

In elementary school things were somewhat okay, but I think that was mainly because I was close friends with someone who was very respected by others because of their looks. Because of that, I received some level of respect too, though not really from the boys. When that friend eventually turned their back on me, everyone else did too.

Middle school was much worse. On the first day, some girls were already ganging up on me. I told a girl that I had been with her and her friends in kindergarten, but she didn’t remember me. She told her friends that I was bothering her and being annoying, and they all started yelling at me. One girl did stand up for me, which I appreciated.

Later, during COVID, I was forced to repeat a class because a teacher clearly disliked me. Other students noticed it too. There were people performing just as poorly as I was, but the teacher singled me out. In the new class I was placed in, boys physically beat me and insulted me.

Because of that, I switched schools to a very small private school with only around 40 students. But after about two weeks the same pattern started again. People began talking badly about me behind my back, even gossiping about me at the same table I was sitting at.

Some girls I thought were my friends never chose me first. They only spent time with me when their other friends weren’t around. They would belittle me and call me stupid for having repeated a class.

Eventually I stopped going to school altogether. Even friends who didn’t know how badly I was being treated still disrespected me in smaller ways. They would say things like I transferred to a school for disabled people, which wasn’t true, it was just a private school. I always felt like I was the last option, someone people only spent time with if no one else was available.

Because I stopped attending school, I was sent to a boarding school. Unfortunately, things didn’t improve there either. After some time, even the caretakers began disrespecting me. They would gossip about me to other staff members or even to the other kids.

For example, one caretaker once played with my hair at the dining table in front of everyone and made a disgusted face, as if my hair was greasy. I wash my hair every day. A kid told me about it later. I believed it because that caretaker clearly didn’t like me.

The caretakers would also take other kids’ sides in conflicts even when both of us were clearly wrong. Some of the kids there also treated me badly. I would be dragged across the floor “as a joke,” even after I told them to stop and became serious. Some boys would hit me even though we were already older.

Eventually I dropped out. But even at home the disrespect continued. My parents would yell at me for things I didn’t do and blame me for things that weren’t my fault.

What confuses me most is that this pattern seems to happen everywhere. Usually the first week in a new environment starts out normal, but after some time people begin treating me badly. I sometimes wonder if people develop certain expectations about me that I somehow fail to meet.

I don’t think it’s related to my appearance, since by general standards I’m not unattractive. I try to stay neutral and avoid attention because social interactions feel overwhelming for me.

But I genuinely don’t understand what causes people to start treating me this way. Are they picking up on something about me that I’m not aware of?

This situation has made me extremely avoidant of the outside world. I can stay inside my house for months without leaving, especially not alone. My parents don’t take my struggles seriously, and I thought things would change as I got older, but they haven’t.

It’s painful to feel like I’ve never had someone who consistently respected me. I’m not overly passive or naïve, I consider myself a strong person, and I do defend myself when necessary. I try not to let people take advantage of me.

But despite that, the disrespect keeps happening, and I don’t know why. I really want to understand what’s causing this and how I can fix it so that this pattern finally stops.