I have, for as long as I can remember, felt superfluous, unwanted, unnecessary, unwelcome, unvalued, uncared for, untouched, and utterly, profoundly, and deeply alone.

Also completely incompetent, unfit for life, shut out, abandoned, left out in the cold, helpless, and lost.

So, not so happy.

It started before I was born. I was unwanted even then. I am the result of an unplanned pregnancy. My mother thought her tubes were tied. But there’s the invasive foolproof method, and the less invasive almost foolproof method, and even as genetic potential, I was one talented fool.

So when I showed up, I was a surprise. There had already been three siblings ahead of me. They kept my parents pretty busy, have been born more or less one after another. From an early age, I was largely ignored and left to my own devices. There was Them, and me. They were somewhat of a unit. I was somewhat of a unwelcome addition. The pesky little redheaded brother.

But at least I had a babysitter. She more or less raised me from early on till I started going to school. She had me from morning till when my mother got home from work. Of course, when she got home from work, she then had to wrangle my older siblings as they got home from school, and then make supper, then serve it, then do the dishes, then get a little TV time in before going to bed.

So I loved my mother. But we didn’t have a lot to do with one another most of the time.

Then when I went to school, my babysitter went off to her own life (because of course, she wasn’t my actual mother and it had just been a job to her, and now she wanted to have her own family) and I became a latchkey kid. For a little while, my parents paid a friend of my babysitter named Cheryl to come make lunch for me on school days. I’d come home from school for lunch every day, even though it was a walk of about 12 blocks each way. Cheryl did the job fine but was not the warmest person in the world. I never liked her very much. And eventually, my parents decided it was easier for them and cheaper to just send me off with a brown bag lunch and I would eat in the lunchroom from then on.

So I walked to school alone, ate my lunch alone, walked back alone. My siblings had their own social lives and I did not get along well with the other students at school. They hated me. I was abused a lot. I took to hiding from everyone during recess and lunch as much as possible.

I had no real friends until college.

And all the time I was growing up, I was made to feel like my concerns didn’t matter and I was supposed to just shut up, not attract attention to myself, never ask for anything, just accept whatever was given when it was given and otherwise fade into the woodwork and pretend I don’t exist.

Nobody ever told me this, of course. They didn’t have to tell me. It was how I was treated. If I tried to ask for something or bring up a problem I was having, I was told, either directly or indirectly, that my parents were busy and tired and I shouldn’t be making things more difficult for them. They had their hands full with both their careers plus maintaining the household plus raising the other three. I should feel guilty for adding anything to that burden. And I did. And so I shut up.

All through all the abuse I suffered in school, all the terror and pain and hiding, the social isolation, the ridicule, the misery, the loneliness, the boredom, the depression. They knew nothing of that. I never told them about it. What would the point be? What could they do? What could they be bothered to do, for that matter? They were so busy, and tired….

So I disappeared into myself. And I’ve never really come out again.

And, of course, my grades remained high. The school part of school was easy for me. And if my grades are good, everything must be fine, right?

Always, I had the feeling of being just barely tolerated. I realize now that this was probably not the case, but I was a sensitive and timid child, and my siblings could be quite harsh and unforgiving about my clumsiness and timidity. I’d be trying to learn something so I could help out, do my share, but the sibling teaching me, usually my sister Catherine, lacked the patience to put up with my fear-induced slowness and clumsiness, and take the job away from me, and say that if I really wanted to help, I could just stay out of the way of everyone else.

So I did.

Oh. And I was told I was useless a lot. Still true.

So I didn’t feel welcome at home or at school. That leaves… oh right. Nowhere.

To this day, I feel like there is no place where I am truly wanted or accepted. Just places where I am allowed in, where I am tolerated.

I know, on some level, that this is not true. I know there’s people who like me and want me around. But all that ice and cold I internalized from the long winter of my lonely, frightened childhood leaves me too numb to really feel it, and too scared to risk believing it.

Some part of me always thinks that people are just bately tolerating me, out of pity perhaps, and at any minute, they could decide they are tired of dealing with me and could send me off, or leave me.

There must be a way out of this vast interior winter wasteland. But I don’t know how to find my way out by myself, and I don’t know where to find a guide.

And I’m afraid of what we’ll find hidden under the snow when it melts.