I guess I’ve always been innocuous and I present, generally, as likeable enough to get by. I’ve also been perpetually the fifth wheel. Even in my closest friendships, the other person has had someone closer. And I guess I’m used to that. I don’t expect to have someone’s full attention, and when I do I feel fairly unnerved. Middle school did a number on me—one girl decided I wasn’t so innocuous and likeable-at-a-distance, and everyone that I had for years considered friends no longer even that, and I realized that although I often felt lonely as the fifth wheel, being the “spare” was infinitely better than being, suddenly, dispensable. High school I was in an unfamiliar school environment where I knew almost no one, eighth grade still seared in my mind, and I had a hard time even trying to make friends. I also found myself in the too-familiar position of liking certain people who were all already in separate groups—my being once again the extra, flitting between people—and add to that my growing insecurities and mood issues, I gave up. I stopped trying. I stopped talking to the people I wanted to be friends with and found groups of students I could hang around without caring much about them—which was as much of a relief as it was emotionally exhausting, and it was also a pretty cold thing for me to do. Except for one ridiculous incident that lost me a could-be friend, I was innocuous and generally well liked even if fairly unknown. Then I was in a different high school program that made it easy for me to duck contact with people for much of the day, and then I was in college in a sea of yet more strangers as peers. Towards the end I started making more connections with the people I had been with for three years, but most of the connections were strained, and ones that weren’t I’ve had a hard time keeping up with now that I’m away, and although I’m sad about that, the distance is familiar.