(((Nonosoy))), you are not a bad person, you are a hurt person because you were bullied a lot and your mother told you to ignore it and it would stop, but that is no help to a child when it comes to their feeling bad about being picked on. Waking up in the middle of the night feeling anxiety and then feeling that you had no feelings for your new girlfriend is more about your feeling "safe" to have feelings for her. This is coming from that overweight child in you that was picked on by other children that were not able to think about your feelings in an adult way, but instead were experimenting with what they could do to gain a sense of power. Actually, that is the same kind of mentality that would kill a small animal where it's about doing something that has to do with "power and control". Young children don't really understand how to see outside their own little world. This is simply the way children are developmentally and even baby animals are the same way, they peck and bite because it's simply the way they are exploring the world around them. A little puppy bites because they tend to explore with their mouths and they are also cutting teeth and that can be both painful and itchy, that is why puppies chew a lot, also why young children chew too when their teeth are coming in and we give them these "safe" things that are often kept in a cold place where the child can safely chew on them to ease the discomfort of their teeth coming out little by little, they call these teething rings.

The fact that you experienced an abusive relationship is reflecting that you still struggled with understanding relationships and others and the girl you were with was exhibiting her own history and lacks that she chose to take out on you. So, you mentioned that was for four and a half years. Well, you were only 17 and a half when you began that relationship, that is still very young and naive. That girl was still trying to figure out her sense of self worth and was punishing you when she struggled with that. At the age you started that relationship, there is still a lot of narcissism in this age group. At that age hormones are very strong and nature tends to push a desire to mate, that is what nature is all about, reproduction and the body is in high gear chemically looking for a match to mate with in order to produce healthy offspring. This is something that is one of the biggest driving forces in nature, even human nature.

You say you read a lot of books by age 8? It's good to like to read because it provides the mind with lots of information to help with problem solving skills. However, it would help you if you spent time reading about human development as this can help you better understand yourself and some of the challenges you faced that are still unresolved in you and can present to you in your sleep in a way that wakes you up where you feel so anxious and confused. You don't have to give your right arm to be normal, actually given your history a lot of how you feel and navigate is a normal reaction to being bullied and not really knowing how to respond to that and how it made you "feel".

I believe that you CAN listen and empathize, after all you know how it feels to hurt and feel insecure. Unfortunately, males tend to be raised wrong where they are often told that "men are not supposed to feel and experience emotional challenges", that is totally wrong. Our emotions are very much a part of us, we need to learn what these emotions mean, once we are helped to understand that we can get better at understanding them instead of thinking these feelings can't be felt and worked through.