As a child, I was mostly silent. Even as a baby, or so the family lore went. “It was creepy, you’d never even cry,” said my mother. But I did cry. As I got older and my anxieties grew and my destiny as an everywhere outcast confronted me. I cried a lot. I was anguished, often thinking of death and making complicated plans of escape to live in solitude before I was even ten. There was never any place I could be safe unless I was entirely alone. Everywhere I went, I wa

One of my most vivid memories of childhood is coming across my baby book. In it, my mother, barely 19 years old, writes about me as a newborn. She had a bubbly, immature kind of handwriting. She was flippant and silly. She didn’t describe any feelings for me. She talked about how pretty I was and how she had high hopes for me. I think she said she loved me but I don’t remember. What I do remember is feeling a wave of loathing for her wash over me. I was about ten or e