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I’ve had a nagging thought of being unwanted my whole life.
It isn’t loud. It doesn’t shout at me or drag me down the hallway by the collar. It’s quieter than that. It sits in the background like the hum of the refrigerator at night, constant, low, impossible to ignore once you notice it. It follows me into rooms. Into conversations. Into photographs where I’m always slightly off to the side.
The first person to confirm it was my shitty dad.It wasn’t even some dramatic, life altering moment. No thunder cracking outside. No slammed doors that shook the house. Just a regular Tuesday argument about unwashed dishes in a sink that always seemed to be full of them.
I don’t even remember what I said. Probably something sarcastic. Probably something that sounded too much like him. And then he just spilled it.
“I should’ve made her abort you when we had the chance.”
Like he was talking about returning a broken appliance. Like I was some faulty purchase that should’ve been exchanged before the warranty ran out. The words didn’t feel real at first. They hung in the air between us, ugly and heavy, and I waited for him to laugh. To say he didn’t mean it. To take it back.
He didn’t. He just looked at me with that cold, irritated expression he gets when something isn’t working the way it should. At the time, I didn’t ask for more details. I didn’t ask when that “chance” was. How close I came to not existing. I didn’t ask if my mom agreed. I didn’t ask if she fought for me.
I really wish I had because that one sentence has haunted me more than any yelling ever did. It loops in my head at the worst times. When I mess up. When someone sighs too loud. When I feel like I’m taking up too much space.
Lonnie made it clear he didn’t want me, but other people were much more subtle. Like my mom.
She’s a good person. A great person, actually. Strong in ways most people aren’t. She works herself raw for us. She loves fiercely. Protectively. She’d go to war for her kids without hesitation. No, not her kids. For Will.
With Will, it’s instinct. It’s immediate. It’s the way she says his name like it’s something fragile and precious. The way she watches him when he’s not looking, like she’s making sure he’s still there. Like losing him would break something in her that could never be fixed.
When he laughs, she laughs. When he cries, she drops everything. When he struggles, she steps in before he even has to ask. And I don’t blame him for that. He needs it. He’s always needed it. But sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that she relaxes a little too much.
Like she assumes I’ll be fine. Like she decided a long time ago that I didn’t need the same kind of saving.I don’t remember her ever looking at me the way she looks at Will, like I’m something she almost lost. Like I’m something she chose. Maybe she did choose me. Maybe she fought harder than I’ll ever know, but Lonnie’s voice still echoes in the back of my head.
Will got a ‘C’ in P.E. one year, which still doesn’t make sense to me. The kid can outrun half the boys in Hawkins when he’s got a reason to. But somehow that single letter, printed in red ink like it meant the end of the world, was enough to set off alarms in her head.
She sat him down at the kitchen table like it was a parent-teacher conference and he was both student and faculty. I remember standing in the doorway, pretending to look for something in the fridge just so I could listen. She folded her hands, leaned forward, and spoke in that soft but serious voice she uses when she’s trying to make something stick.
“School matters, Will. All of it. Even P.E. You work hard in every class so you can have choices later. So you can go wherever you want. College, big cities, wherever your heart takes you.”
Will nodded, eyes wide, like he’d personally disappointed the American education system. After about twenty minutes of talking about effort and responsibility and how smart he is, she sighed, smiled, and ruffled his hair.
“I know you can do better,” she said.
Then she pulled him into one of those hugs that seem to swallow you whole. The kind where she presses her cheek against the top of your head and rocks you a little without realizing it. Will melted into it like he’d been waiting all day for it.
I don’t think my mom has ever even looked at one of my report cards. They’d sit at the bottom of my backpack for days until I remembered to forge her signature. If I brought home a bad grade, there wasn’t a lecture. No talk about college. No worried crease between her eyebrows. Just silence. Or worse, nothing at all. Like it didn’t matter enough to comment on.
The school nurse called my mom when Will fell off the monkey bars in third grade. Scraped both knees so bad they had to pick gravel out with tweezers. I remember because I was in science class when they announced he was going home early.
By the time I got out of school, she’d already told the story three times, how the nurse barely got halfway through the explanation before she was grabbing her keys. “He sounded so small on the phone,” she’d said. “I couldn’t wait another second.”
She drove like a maniac, apparently. Blew through a yellow light. Didn’t even turn the radio off. Just ran into the school, scooped him up, bandages and all, and took him home. Bought him ice cream on the way back. Let him pick the flavor, even though he always takes forever to decide.
When I came home a few months later, limping and trying not to cry because I was fifteen and apparently that meant I wasn’t allowed to cry anymore, she was at the counter counting bills from the store.
“What happened?” she asked, barely glancing up.
“Fell off my bike,” I muttered. She winced sympathetically.
“Oh, honey. I’m sorry. It’s just been crazy busy today. I can’t leave right now. Can you put some ice on it?” That was it. No frantic drive. No scooping me up. No ice cream. Just an apology tangled up in exhaustion. I nodded and hobbled to the freezer.
I had broken my ankle.
I found that out two days later when I finally convinced her it still hurt too much to stand on. The doctor looked at the X-ray like it was obvious.
“How long has he been walking on this?” he asked. She looked at me. I looked at the floor.
“Couple days,” I had said. He shook his head. She squeezed my shoulder. Not in the same way she squeezes Will’s, hers with him is automatic, instinctual. With me it felt remembered. Like she had to consciously decide to do it.
“I’m sorry,” she said again in the car. And I believed she meant it. I always believe she means it. But sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if she’d sped to me. If she’d dropped everything. If my pain had been urgent instead of inconvenient.
Will gets lectures about P.E. because she sees a future stretching out in front of him like a highway. She wants it smooth. Safe. Full of opportunity. With me, it feels like she assumes I’ve already learned how to drive on cracked pavement and maybe I have.
As I got older, it got worse, not in obvious ways. Not in ways you could point to and say, there, that’s abuse. There was never a time where she hit me or cursed me out. My mom never called me a disappointment. Never threw a slur at me for the way I dressed or the music I listened to or the way I let my hair hang in my face like a curtain.
There was always food on the table, even if it was canned soup stretched too thin. There was always a roof over my head, even if it leaked when it rained. And if I needed to talk, she’d sit down and listen.
On paper, that’s love. And it is love. I know that. But love isn’t always measured in what’s provided. Sometimes it’s measured in what’s noticed. There were plenty of times she didn’t check on me after a life ending monster attack.
She checked on Will. Every time.
After the Demogorgon. After the tunnels. After the hospital. After the mall. After every nightmare that clawed its way into our lives and left us shaking and bleeding and trying to pretend we were just normal kids in a normal town.
She would rush to him. Hands on his face. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Let me see.” And I would stand a few feet away, dust settling in my lungs, ears still ringing, adrenaline still making my hands tremble. No matter the trauma, he was what mattered.
Again, I don’t blame her. Will has been the epicenter of so much horror. Things attached to him. Used him. Tried to hollow him out from the inside. He’s been a target in ways I haven’t. But I was there too.
I saw things. I fought things. I dragged people to safety. I bled. I broke. I woke up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and no one noticing because I learned to be quiet about it.
Sometimes I think she looks at me and sees someone steady. Someone solid. The reliable one. The one who will help carry groceries, fix the sink, drive his brother across town at two in the morning without complaint.
The strong one. And strong people don’t need checking on. Strong people don’t need to be held. Don’t take this the wrong way though, I love my little brother. He’s probably my favorite person in the world. If someone asked me to name the best thing that’s ever happened to me, it would be him.
He hasn’t even graduated from high school yet and he’s lived through more than ten people put together. He’s been hunted, possessed, isolated, terrified and he’s still gentle. Still kind. Still looking for the good in people even after everything.
I’m so proud of him it hurts sometimes. Proud of everything he has accomplished and everything he still has ahead of him. Will is the strongest and most kind person in this world. Strong in a quiet way. In a way that bends but doesn’t break.
If anyone deserves all of her urgency, all of her protection, it’s him. I love my Mom and I know she loves me. I see it in the way she leaves the porch light on when I’m out late. In the way she asks if I’ve eaten. In the way she trusts me with Will, like she believes I’ll always come through.
But sometimes love feels different than being wanted. Wanted feels chosen. It feels like someone would tear the world apart to keep you here. And I still don’t know, if there had only been room for one of us, if I would’ve been the one she chose.
That thought sits with me, even when I try to shake it. I love them both more than anything.
I just wish, sometimes, that I didn’t still feel so forgotten.