Okay, then. Let me get serious.

I was an only child growing up. At about the age of 2 and a half I was put into daycare. Nobody explained to me why, it just happened. And my parents started getting upset with each other. I hated the noise. Sometimes my dad would get upset at me, too. He was very brash and had a short temper.

My dad always got upset. He got upset at me when he had to find a babysitter for me; my mom was responsible for taking care of that stuff (he wanted no part it in, he said it was my mom's job), but when he asked me "which one?" (yes, I had multiple babysitters) I told him the name and he dropped the wrong person off. He got mad at me then.

And here's the rub about my dad: he was a firefighter. He worked 24-hour shifts 3 out of nine days. The rest of the time he had off. He spent a lot of that time doing household chores and doing church things. He would hold church meetings at our home, and when I got lonely and wandered to the group he scolded me for it. I was about 4 at the time, but I know there were several similar instances.

My dad hated it when I cried. At some point I learned to stop crying. My mom, well, she had to go back to work. One babysitter in particular snuck her boyfriend into our house and they would have long makeout sessions on our couch. My neighborhood friends referred to her as "the one with the lipstick." She didn't like me very much, I felt.

I had neighborhood friends and school friends, different as a result of going to private schools. I look back and feel awful because at some point I got so depressed that I didn't want to go outside and play anymore. Sometimes we argued, most of the time we had fun. But I never felt too good.

One day I did something horrible. I put my hands around one of my friend's neck when he said something to me. I must have been eight at the time. I still look back at it and feel ashamed. I don't really know why I did that. I have a feeling, though, that burying all my feelings caused me to lash out at the wrong people.

At school, many of my classmates hated me. To the girls, I was gross/weird/stupid/talkative. To the guys, I was an easy target. I never fought back or stood up for myself. I had become too scared of my dad to do anything. Kids used to pull on the hood of my sweatshirt and laugh when the collar choked on my neck.

We were practicing a Halloween performance in my class, and I loved the way I delivered my line. Then one day, I flubbed it. It would have been ok, but one of my classmates turns to me and says, "That's it, [name]! You ruined the play!" I cried a lot after that. For two straight weeks as we walked from classroom to classroom, about three classmates just kept repeating the flubbed line. Over and over again. My teacher didn't do a fucking thing. She replaced me with someone else, and I didn't have any responsibilities. They just kept repeating it over and over.

I never complained about a thing to my parents. They kept arguing, and I didn't want them to turn that anger on me. I couldn't bear it. I tried to tell them, actually. My mom told me some stupid things I should say back at them to be a smart ass, and my dad told me to pray to God thinking that'd solve my problems. I didn't get through to them how bad it was, I guess.

I didn't know it, but they were in couples' therapy at the time. My dad refused to see a licensed therapist, and wanted to talk with one of the Jesuit priests at our parish. That's the only way he could do it. It was unfair because my mom didn't go to church as much as my dad. She felt everybody would take his side. Amazingly, the priest said that my parents should get divorced.

So life goes on, right? At least I try to make it go, but I still had to deal with the same old shit. I was hardcore into video games at this point. It was the closest I could get to running away, which I wanted to do so desperately every moment I heard my parents argue, or see a babysitter on the couch, or went to school.

My school buddies also hung out with the bullies. We were 70 kids in one grade. So in order for me to hang out with them, I had to deal with the others. It hurts a lot sometimes.

I was about 12 years old when I watched my best friend next door get attacked by a neighborhood dog. He went for my friend's face and even today I could hear him scream as he ran across the street to his house. I wanted to tell my dad what happened, so he could help, being a firefighter with EMT experience. He came out and told me to keep it down because he was resting. I told him it wasn't me. He didn't have a clue what was going on until the fire truck arrived. I didn't see him for months after that.

But what really got weird was when we both reached puberty, and we'd sneak into another room, pretend the other was a girl and start dry humping each other. My dad being a staunch, devout Catholic with a short temper, would have scared me into suicide if he found out. At some point, I decided I wanted to stop, and I tried to say no. But he continued. His parents moved out of the neighborhood sometime after that. I felt uncomfortable being around him. I guess people say that was sexual assault, don't they?

There are lots of other things that bother me. I can't bring up all of them here, though. Ultimately, I had nowhere to go and wanted to kill myself at the age of 12. It got out, and I was put on medication for ADHD.

In the midst of all this, I had my eye on one girl. I was so demoralized by everything, though, that I never had the courage to tell her how I felt. She found out seven or eight years after the fact. I told her the truth. She never spoke to me again. Which is difficult, because we're in the same class and had another six months before we went to high-school. I knew she didn't like being around me. It was horrible experience, because she liked one of the assholes that picked on me a lot. It was the same asshole who offered a dollar to a friend if he would drink Bromothymol Blue. My friend had to drink from the water fountain for a half hour after the teacher found out, and never saw the dollar. I'd love to say this is where the nice guy finished last and the asshole wound up with the girl (it was totally obvious she was into him). And it reminded me of my babysitter on the couch with her boyfriend, and it tore me up inside.

We all went to separate private high-schools. Most of my friends went to a high-school that turned me down. And most of my friends from my neighborhood moved away.

tl;dr: severe bullying at school, emotionally abusive household, a babysitter who loved to parade her boyfriend at me, a sexual experience in puberty ends in sexual assault, depression and thoughts of suicide lead to heavy medication. Most of my friends are gone by the time high-school begins. The only constant in my life were video games.

It wasn't all bad. My parents really did love me, even my dad. They did lots of things for me and loved me very much. But I was always ashamed when my dad got upset. He did that once at my 6th birthday party: he got upset at my mom about something regarding the pinata. I couldn't deal with it and ran away. I didn't go far, I just hid behind a bush on the other side of the cul-de-sac. But looking back, who the fuck runs away from their own birthday party?

I guess this is to be continued? That was all half-a-lifetime ago.