Great existential questions, Batman! in Give me your soul

I've been thinking a lot, lately, about who I am. I have trouble remembering much of my life (my long-term memory is awful) except for a few blips here and there. Before I started school I had a few neighborhood friends in the apartment complex my dad and I lived in. I remember we had plum trees around. When I started school I couldn't make any friends...people didn't take to me very well. It wasn't something I was prepared for so I handled it the only way that made sense, violently. People are surprised when I tell them I was a bully once but it's true. Eventually I changed schools, to a full elementary school and I toned that down significantly. It's tough to figure out exactly why I stopped lashing out at people but I assume it's because I was a small kid and that school had lots of big ones.

I had one friend. There were kids in my new neighborhood (we upgraded from apartment complex to townhouse...complex? I dunno) that I played with but it was less friendship than proximal convenience. My one friend was a smart kid and he had a group of other smart kids I was allowed to hang around at school. You know how, in high school, sometimes really awful groups of hot girls will allow one plain-looking girl to hang around them in order to make them look prettier? I was the intellectual equivalent of the plain girl. I was a dumb kid and I had the grades to prove it. My entire childhood was a fight to prove I was applying myself and was just legitimately stupid. I mostly just clung to the edge of that smart group and tried not to sound dumb. I didn't fit in anywhere, really. I never had a likeable personality as a kid or even now as an adult.

Aside from being a temperamental spaz I didn't really have much of a sense of self. I have a better idea what I am now: I'm a sponge. I don't mean like a mooch, I mean I soak up the personalities of the people I hang around. I have terribly few friends nowadays but they're good ones and I like the pieces of them of I apply to myself. Don't mistake this sentiment for me being happy with myself, I most certainly am not. But, if I have to be a mental Frankenstein's monster, I should at least pick some decent parts.