I'm the opposite =/ When people started bullying, I just made myself more and more noticeable and obvious, until at this point people I've never met will say they know me on first meeting--or some folks will have their friends asking about whether they really know "that girl."
I think it was a form of vengeance. "Okay, you want to treat me badly because of who I am? Too bad, suckers, because the more you mistreat me, the more I'm going to refuse to conform."
That part of my personality has helped a lot in some respects, but really shot me in the foot in others.
I was starting to get this way in 10th grade. That was a big year for me. I was bolstered by a great social base online and actually made a few real life friends for the first time in 7 years. They were the other outcasts in the school, who I had never met because they were all a grade or two above me and there was no inter-grade mingling until this point.
Then I learned that we were moving at the end of the school year, and shortly after that Columbine happened and the school started cracking down really really hard on anyone that didn't fit in. The principal even did an interview in the local newspaper claiming that it's the kids that get bullied that are the real problem. This was a very corrupt and unfriendly place. People started gossiping about how they thought the people I had just started making friends with (the so-called 'Black Trenchcoat Gang of the school' even though only one of them wore a trenchcoat) were going to do the same thing and something should be done about them. Then the rumors and lies began to spread.
I couldn't stand it. I started getting very outspoken. It didn't go well. It's good I was only there for a couple more months, or things probably would have gone very very wrong for me.
Then over the summer my best friend broke off contact with me and I began processing everything that had happened over the past year... plunged into a deep depression... and just didn't have the will to have anything to do with anyone over the next school year.
So that's how I ended up going one way instead of the other. Like yours, it has its ups and downs. I avoid a lot of negative crap from people, but I also avoid a lot of positive.