Why did I do it? That’s the question I asked myself every night as I lay on that camping cot, listening to the house settle around me. Was it love? Some pathetic hope that they’d somehow wake up and see me as a person worth caring about? Or was it something darker—a need to prove to myself that I was better than them, even as they ground me into the dirt?
I think it was simpler than that. I wanted to see if there was anything real beneath the surface. If, stripped of their manufactured superiority, there might be actual human beings who could love someone without conditions, without qualifications, without measuring worth in dollar signs and social standing.
For three years, I conducted my experiment. I watched and waited and paid their bills, and they repaid me with contempt.
At family dinners—which I was expected to attend despite being “an embarrassment”—I was seated at the far end of the table, often in a mismatched chair because they didn’t have enough of the “good” dining chairs for everyone. They’d talk over me, around me, through me, but never to me. When Brad would launch into another fabricated story about his real estate success, everyone would hang on his every word. When I’d mention something about my day, my mother would literally stand up and walk away mid-sentence.
“Arthur, we’re trying to have a pleasant dinner,” she’d say over her shoulder. “Nobody wants to hear about mopping floors.”
