Stronger? Or just harder, weaker, and less of yourself?

Kanye West has a great song called Stronger from his Graduation album. In the background there is a robotic sounding voice that repeats "Work it, make it, do it, makes us harder, better, faster, stronger" as well as Kanye repeats over and over "That that don't kill me can only make me stronger," both of which are referencing the old saying, What doesn't kill you will make you stronger. I feel like this is only sometimes true. From 3rd to 5th grade, every single school day, a kid named Blake Polley and his group of friends would make fun of me for being fat, monstrous (I was 5'2" in fourth grade), and just straight up fat. I wish I could say that didn't kill me. I am obviously still alive, but one day after almost two years of being bullied every single day I snapped. I beat him so hard, so thoroughly, and so intensely, I broke his nose, and ejected 3 teeth from his mouth as well as cut up his lips and my hands on his braces. I struggled with depression for a little bit and as I said I wish I could say it didn't kill me. Sure it made me stronger, I watch what I eat, I work on my strength and make sure I stay skinny in response of that bullying, but the thing is that I didn't get much stronger. I would call it harder. Every time I've been hurt on an emotional level I put up another wall of defense around me. Honestly, I don't know how many walls I have around me now, what I do know is that I am a different person now. That little kid inside of me, the innocence inside of me died after that. And it has scarred me to this day, even now, almost 6 years after I finished it, after I let a beast out of it's cage to end the bullying I have this inner monologue. When someone else calls you something or says you'll never do something you have two choices, you can either say "no" and fight for it and prove that person wrong, or you can lay down and let him roll over you. I eventually got to the place where I am no longer fat. As a response to the bullying however I learned to walk around almost all day with headphones in to block out the things others would say about me. That works fine, until those things aren't being said about you, they're being said by you. And when your voice inside your head, it's hard to do anything about it, in fact it destabilizes you, it makes your security inadequate, its literally immobilizing. That has been the longterm affect that bullying has had on me, it didn't kill me, but rather it made me harder, weaker, and more vulnerable. That was name calling. In the book A Long Way Gone, a kid named Saidu talks about how every time someone attacks him with guns and spears and swords, he accepts death, but every time so far he has escaped the reaper. What he is scared of is that every time one accepts death, he dies a little on the inside, all the way to the point where he may be physically alive and breathing but only in that sense. Emotionally, personality wise, and spiritually, his body will eventually be just a carcass of what he used to be. A empty shell that simply walks around, If bullying killed my innocence, I feel that accepting certain death would be only more so. I don't know what is true as I have never fully accepted death, however I pray for those kids fighting the wars in Africa, the young kids that voluntarily entered war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the soldiers all over the world, no matter how old or young that they may be, that you can always go back to at least partially alive on the inside. I may only be 90% of what I was at the end of 5th grade now, but I've healed and I've moved forward, and I've won back some of what is lost. But just as if you believe in heaven, when you die, you may continue on into eternal life, you will never be able to inhabit a human body of flesh and bones again, and so in a way you will never make it back to 100%, I believe the same thing happens to your soul when you accept death.