All names in this whole section, except for my own, are fictitious.
On a cloudy day in 1984, I, Jesse Musson, was born along with my twin sister Lauren. We would get to explore the world together. I also had a 2 ½ year older brother, Anton. And my parents were Maria and Hector. My parents are very sweet people. They will do everything for you, know a lot and like to always help you out and I always really liked getting that support. I viewed them this way, my whole childhood. In all that time I was able to experience many nice things. When things were going well, I was busy, passionate, enthusiastic and a real clown, but this alternated with periods in which I wasn’t really happy: I suffered from incredibly strong fears throughout my childhood, and I just did not always feel comfortable. I also often had the feeling that I was being bullied, and this was probably simply because I did not show my feelings sufficiently in the contact with my peers. I preferred to move around outside all the busy social traffic, playing often alone or with my brother or sister. Yet I did play with friends. I brought them home or went to play with them. But this fine friendly contact could also suddenly be over, because of something that happened. Then I withdrew into myself, lost faith in the other, and in myself.
I was a very good student. I always got straight A’s, had the maximum exam scores, and also enjoyed learning, it just went natural. My sister Lauren was the same way, although in the primary school years I was probably just a tad better. My brother Anton was highly gifted and skipped a class. They allowed me to do the same, in the 4th grade, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with my twin sister, who was in the same class. Most of the time I just followed her (she once called me ‘duckling’ because of this fact). We went to school together, we went to music lessons together, we went to judo together, in short: we did a lot together. And she was very important to me. If she came back from school a little later because she was still helping out with something, I would sit at home, worried about where she was, if nothing bad had happened, and if she was still coming home.
I looked up to my brother enormously. I also always had the idea that he got more attention than I did, because in my head there was the idea of getting more attention if you are smarter. So I wanted to be like him, and did everything I could to achieve that. He seemed like the perfect brother. I followed him when he walked down the street in his Batman suit, I was Robin, but I didn’t have a suit. If I had asked for one, I would have gotten one, but I preferred not to stand out like that. Actually, I just didn’t have a clear identity.
Since fifth grade there was always a nice girl who caught my eye, but I made little or no contact with them. Sometimes I even hid from them, because I was very afraid of their opinion of me. One time I had hidden again in the little porch in front of the garage door of a garage box, all the time looking around the corner to the schoolyard, to my silent love. Apparently her sister had noticed this, because suddenly they were standing in front of me together. I babbled something like “Yes, this is my usual place to stand…” but I was really dying inside. My sister’s girlfriends were also favorite subjects, because I didn’t have to make much effort to make contact with them, because that happened automatically when they were at our home. I exchanged sweets with one of them, and played footsie, because she also liked me then. But this went away by itself, and then I would let my eye fall on another girl again.
