someone else living my best life
for a few years of my childhood, there was a kid i absolutely hated. we'll call them Ren because they need a psuedonym and because our dynamic resembled one from a video game i like.
Ren and i had similar names, similar appearances, and similar personalities.
crucially, we had the same... "complication" to be mindful of, but only one of us knew.
i had suspected that about myself since about halfway through grade school, but any attempts to get my parents (and eventually a psychiatrist) to take me seriously were always met with statements about how i'm wrong and shouldn't say it. this is only kinda a tangent, i promise.
so, with "birds of a feather" in mind, why did i hate Ren so much? at the time, i thought it was just because they were having more success being me than i was, but then i matured a lot and started thinking about them again. eventually, an idea hit me, fast as a raindrop but hard as a brick.
Ren had support. They weren't left to freeze slowly in the rain.
it's not even like they were at the top of the social hierarchy. they did fine in grade school when nobody thought hard about it, but in high school i'd see them eating lunch alone at their locker pretty frequently. they were graded higher than me- i think- but not with such strong numbers that they could expect a call about a scholarship. the thing that designated them as "more successful" is that they always seemed happy. they would get special treatment from the system that i never had. they were more in tune with their needs. they actually had an explanation for why they felt different.
looking back as i write about this, i feel confident that i don't hate Ren. i find myself hoping that they're doing well, especially with the statistics for how people like us end up.
i guess the real tragedy here- aside from how the adults around me failed to do what i desperately needed- is that if i'd been a healthier person back then, maybe i'd have invited them to eat lunch with me. maybe we could've been friends.