OP: One problem. I have no idea what its like to both A) get beat up or B) beat someone up.
Me:
... there are the memories that you forget because they don't mesh up with the way you see the world, with the way that you remember the world to be. A man who believes that his childhood was golden edits out the memories of shouting in the night and his mother's red eyes in the morning; a woman who believes that her fiance is perfect forgets the flashes she's seen of the monster lurking beneath the skin.
I'd forgotten the pain of taking a beating.
The physical trauma is the smallest part of it. You move carefully afterwards and try not to jar yourself, of course -- oddly, bruises are worse than cuts -- and it is a foretaste of hell, but the physical damage fades quickly, especially when you're fourteen.
The looks of scorn afterwards as you limp through the corridors of the school and head towards home are nothing; you soon armour yourself against them. The other looks are harder to deflect, but you don't want their help and you don't want their question sand you most certainly don't want their pity.
All you want is invisibility, and that is the one thing that is denied you.
But even that is not the real pain; that begins before the first punch lands, and keeps going long after they leave you curled up in a ball on the locker room floor.
The real pain is spiritual; the real pain comes from knowing that there was nothing you could have done to stop it from happening then, and nothing you can do to stop it from happening again.
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