The beginning of my life was plain, nothing super notable. I was born into a large family to parents who were already overwhelmed. I am the 7th out of 9 kids, including adopted, half, and step. So even if something special but not important did happen, they wouldn't remember, or they would probably think it happened to one of my siblings instead.
There's a story about me and a bus. If you ask my mom, it goes... 3 of my siblings and I were outside playing, and the 3 of them were in a 13 passenger van that we called the big blue bus, #6 (the brother immediately older than me, by 1 year and 2 months) was just playing in the seats. #5 (the sister who is immediately older than #6, by 11 months and 5 days) was retrieving twisslers from the center console. #4 (the brother who is directly older than #5, by 1 year and 1 week) was at the wheel, pressing buttons and heaving levers. And me #7 (who was somewhere around a year and a half old) was sitting in the driveway minding my own business when #4 accidentally put the bus in neutral, and it starts rolling towards me. My dad manages to see this in enough time to scoop me up, get me to safety, jump in the bus, and stop it. He then swiftly delivered a butt kicking to the 3 inside the bus. However, if you ask my dad about this story, it wasn't me in the driveway it was #6. And I wasn't anywhere around. Who knows which version is true? Mom wasn't really around, and Dad doesn't have the best memory.
There was a project in freshman year where we were supposed to make a "book" about our lives. The first part was describing what you were like as a baby. My parents described me as "a baby" "You were relatively mellow, but idk just like any other baby." I asked again and again, and that was the best I got. Another part of the assignment was getting pictures of you as you grew up, and as much as my mom likes to say there are pictures of me as a baby or toddler, there really isn't. If you put a baby picture of me next to a baby picture of #6, she can't tell the difference. In the end, I failed the whole project because I stopped caring to ask.
Now, if it sounds like I'm bitter, it's probably because I am. I'm not going to lie. I definitely have a severe case of middle child syndrome. That doesn't mean, however, that I dislike my parents. I love my parents. This book is going to paint them in a bad light because I refuse to sugarcoat how things happened or felt to me. I hope that you keep an open mind. If I can forgive them and acknowledge that they're different people now, then you can too.
