My inferiority complex didn’t come from nowhere. No child just wakes up one day a self-hating adult. 

Thankfully, thanks to damn near two decades of therapy, a lot of self-reflection, and shitloads of nonfiction writing, I know exactly where all of these feelings are coming from. These feelings are rooted in my past, and their tendrils continue to extend into the present, especially because I’m constantly reminded of who I am and where I came from by the pills I take daily and the household I live in. 

What the hell do I mean by that?

Well… for one, I’m a product of a severely blended family. I have no full siblings; I consider Jack my full brother even though he has a different dad than me, and his dad is significantly more dysfunctional than mine (I haven’t seen Clarke since 2020 and have no idea where he is. I only know he’s alive because no news is good news). 

My other half-brother (my dad’s son), however, is a complete stranger to me, as is my stepbrother. Why? Because a long time ago when I was between the ages of four and six/seven years old, my severely mentally ill stepbrother did…well… things to me that required the courts to get involved and legally bar my stepbrother from being in the same household with me. 

My stepmom then blamed me (a four to six year old) for “breaking up the family”, and verbally and mentally abused me every chance she had till I was a teenager, when I stopped going to my dad’s house over the weekends. Oh, and during all of that, my dad did little (if anything) to protect me, and didn’t seem to believe that my stepmom could be so cruel behind closed doors. 

Meanwhile, up until March 2020 when the covid pandemic hit, my mom was stuck in a perpetual loop of dating the most dysfunctional dudes imaginable, because she believed she could somehow fix them (her words, not mine). Through her, I got to experience what it’s like to live with alcoholics, opioid addicts, untreated mental illness, and literal psychopaths who could never take “no” for an answer and stalked us wherever we were till Mom got the cops (and security cameras) involved (I wish I was exaggerating). 

So, is it any wonder why I feel so damn out-of-place and frankly ashamed of who I am, and where I come from? Why I hide from the world, struggle to make friends, and feel like I don’t belong on a college campus or deserve my A’s and B’s?

Logically, I know that I’m far from the only person with such a dysfunctional background. Logically, I know that my background does not define who I am today. Logically, I know I’m not the only person struggling with chronic health issues or severe anxiety. Logically, I know I’m not a broken idiot with a hopeless future (my future is actually quite bright, to be honest). Logically, I know I’ve been working my ass off in college (even though, compared to my whole life, these past six semesters have been the easiest, happiest years of my life, so far), and I deserve the grades I’ve been getting. 

Emotionally, however… I struggle. A lot.