Page 2 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

After all, they were my parents. And there’s a sadness in that alone—grief for what you’re supposed to have, for what you never got.

Regret for the version of them I kept hoping might show up one day, softened by time, finally ready to see me as more than an inconvenience.

I mourned possibility.

I mourned the fantasy of family.

But I didn’t mourn them the way other people mourn. Because that’s not who they were.

It’s not who we were.

They had no time for me when they were alive.

I wasn’t a child to them. I was a carefully scheduled item.

A problem to be managed.

A name stamped on tuition checks.

A signature on holiday cards written by assistants with handwriting too perfect to be human.

They outsourced my upbringing the way they outsourced everything else—efficiently, expensively, with the belief that money could cover the gaps where warmth should’ve been.

Boarding schools.

Tutors.

Universities.

And when I wasn’t being shuffled from one sterile institution to the next, I was being corrected. Polished. Sanded down.

Punished for not fitting.

Because I’m different.

My brain doesn’t behave the way theirs did.

ADHD, they called it in doctor’s offices with soothing voices and pamphlets.

My parents called it a defect.

An embarrassment.

A thing to hide.

So they hid me.

They kept me away from dinners and meetings and any room where I might speak too fast or fidget too much or forget the script they wanted me to follow.

They didn’t hit me or scream—nothing dramatic enough to make a good story.

They were just quiet. Their disappointment was loud, though.

But me? I got good at pretending.

Good at swallowing every sharp thought, every too-big feeling, every urge to create something messy and alive.

I got good at being acceptable.