Disappear.

The first trick I ever mastered was how to disappear. It was a survival skill, though I've since adapted it to recreational pursuits.
I wasn't always the tall, handsome, muscular, self-effacing simian you see today. I was a mid-sized fat kid, not granted the girth for the fierce strength so often equated with the tubby, but not small enough or coordinated enough to shirk off the pounds as mere juvenile adipose. I was awkward, even for a human cylinder.
I had my brain, though, such as it may have been, so I did a lot of contemplation. I could not confront my pursuers, as I was as philosophically ill-suited for violence as I was physically inept; I would have to simply avoid them.
Every day.
To and from school.
About three-quarters of a mile, each way.
In a housing development with not so many trees.
It seemed hopeless, and for the most part, it was, but I've come to realize that I had a slight advantage.
Invisibility is not actually the bending of light; if I could have done such a thing, I'd have rearranged the photons into a force field with a sizzling front edge and tanned the lot of them at about a thousand feet out. Instead, it involves not being where you are...which, if you are prone to major depressive disorder, is actually second nature. Your brain, that foul enemy of proper seratonin uptake and arbiter of hateful shame, doesn't want to be anywhere anyway.
And first, you must still your mind. To me, that meant I was halfway home. My mind was so stilled, I sometimes heard it sloshing around in the meningal soup while I was hopping fences or slipping behind sheds, avoiding the open road and its horrors with negligible audio accompaniment.
Of course, the slightest sound turns you into a deer in the headlights; that's the bonus platter of generalized anxiety, a cart-horse equation that, coupled with the comorbidities of diabetes and being a victim of bullying, may never be resolved with any finality.
So your mind is stilled, to the point where the blood in your ears, which is pounding pounding pounding, is reduced in the mix. The world, every bird, every gate, every car, every snickering adolescent who hates the literary and/or overweight, is a lion's roar in a monastery.
Next, you have to move. Given the flatness of my feet and the yellowed-rubber of my sneaker soles, I learned to push off, heel to toe, with next to no report, even on gravel. I doubt my ankles will ever quite recover, but it was necessary. I am here to tell the tale, and yes, the gum soles are squeakier than the black or white soles. Trust me. I studied this.
What if you spot your erstwile tormenters and they are right in front of you? That part is something I actually stole from their beloved game of baseball. You see, the pitcher's head is a tell, if you're on base. He can fight the urge, but where his head goes, his body (and yes, the ball) follows. Watch the back of the head, dead center over the medulla oblongata, and you will know where they're looking. No amount of walleyedness will help them, as long as you draw a set of imaginary triangles to depict their vision and their range of motion. The key is to stay in the blind spot for as long as possible.
In time, all of this becomes sublimated, like any survival skill.
And I was maybe seven or eight when I started studying it. So much for the formative years ending well.