This sounds a lot like me with very slight variations in character and very subtle differences in behavior. I get you pal.
In my case I was a bully who ended up getting bullied for my first two years of high school (I fell into depression from 8th to 9th grade. In retrospect a lot of it had to do with being about 2 years younger than my classmates and my body being 4 years younger than the new overlords I was to encounter.
The high school bullies, even at a private Catholic institution, were quite large for 9th grade and had fully matured physically.
I was also to encounter "Public School" bullies, a new species of bully I had never had contact with before, who had a more brutish and boorish style that I didn't know how to respond to. They had been schooled in hard knocks and were being sent to my high school as a "corrective" measure to try to straighten them out by their parents.
I graduated K through 8th grade with a graduating class of 19 people, a very small Catholic community. So you can imagine joining a school, even if still Catholic, with a graduating class of 1,300+, would be a culture shock of sorts to say the least. I had enjoyed being a fat fish in Junior High, laughing it up and gurgling all the oxygen out of the water, while using OJ Simpson level of narcissistic charm to continue my career. That was now over. And the confusions of girl problems (mostly owed to Catholic propaganda and Puritan values interfering with natural human growth and emotional development) weighed heavily and nearly destroyed me. I needed Big Japan to slap me awake and teach me the ways of men in the Big Ocean Life.
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] The Small Pond now just a distant memory.
On one occasion he smashed my hand randomly off the desk because I wasn't paying attention to his bully questions enough. I sat there and did nothing.
After months of his lip and finally having enough self esteem and self awareness to take intelligent action, I had decided that it was time to stand up to the bully and show him what I learned. We squared off an inch away from his face, he said, "What are you going to do, soccer player, call your soccer player friends?" He had nicknamed me "soccer player" because I was tall but physically immature and had become a quintessential loser, not because I played soccer.
To be continued...