When I was a kid

I thought I was terribly fat, I had thick glasses and read too much by most accounts, although I was quite active after school and on the weekends, playing with a small circle of friends, stealing away to the nearby lake, even venturing near the forbidden woods.

This is what I looked like at age 9 or 10. I found it last night and was struck by how unhappy I look. It's a very flat affect. I think I was depressed most of my life, even as a child, at least mildly. And my home life was not what I wanted it to be. Everyone in my family lived in their own little world. My mother and father never took vacations together, in fact we didn't take 'vacations' where we went anywhere to be tourists--we just went home to visit family in Kentucky from wherever we were, and that was nice. But my mom took me most times, my dad did once when she was recovering from oral surgery. We each had our hobbies (my father, radios; my mother, ceramics; me, reading) and so after dinner, the one time we were together and interacting, we each retreated to our own parts of the house to pursue them. I never realised that was abnormal until I was an adult. Maybe it would have been different if I'd had a sibling, I don't know.

So I look at that child now, and how it all affected her, and I wish I could go back in time and tell her it will be okay, and that someday she'll feel better.