But did the bullying stop? Was that the end of it? I don't think of bullying as a single or even pair of incidents. The type of bullying being discussed here is years of mental and physical torment.
Physical bumps and bruises heal, mental bruises not so quickly. You may have lost the battle but won the war by showing strength to the bullies and to yourself.
"Physical bumps and bruises heal, mental bruises not so quickly."
Unfortunately, I don't know about any study correlating bullying (or lack of it) with future success or failure in life. For example, do we know that being bullied in childhood encourage or discourage (or have no correlation with) development of one's psychological resilience?
While playing - growling, biting, jumping - wolf puppies prepare themselves to live as wolves. Humans are the most cruel animals on Earth, thus it seems natural that the play of human puppies is much more cruel than that of wolf puppies.
Physical bumps and bruises heal, mental bruises not so quickly. You may have lost the battle but won the war by showing strength to the bullies and to yourself.