Baby: Endless screamer Toddler: Rambunctious, over the top high energy screamer

Young child: Tomboy, high energy, fairly intelligent but incredibly scattered. Somewhere in there I started developing anxiety issues and germaphobic tendencies, which went poorly with the fact that I was still a tomboy and loved to play outside...but would have to run in fairly frequently to scrub my hands literally bloody. I had no friends as I was a weird kid with weird tics and rituals and ideas about things.

Middle school: Most of this time frame my parents were taking care of a kid's camp and it was just me and my siblings for 6 months out of the year up on this mountain. I played babysitter a lot for them and I grew to dread every day. This is also the timeframe I started developing disordered eating tendencies due to food allergies and sensitivities that wouldn't be figured out for about another 15 years.

High school: If I thought I was weird and socially awkward before...I had no idea. I fit in even less, on top of the other previously mentioned issues I also developed really bad depression. I was homeschooled and pretty smart so I'd tear through my work in a few hours, then spent the rest of the day sitting off by myself listening to music for hours and hours on end or reading sci-fi books and wishing I could vanish into those worlds. I had a pretty good mental snap at 15 and spent most of the next year on drugs that basically turned me into a zombie.

It wasn't until my late teens that I started making friends with other sci-fi/geek/nerd types and feeling a little less completely out of my element in life itself.

Whenever people say childhood/your teen years are the best part of your life I can only shudder and answer "Man, I hope not!" Part of me feels sorry for my younger, awkward, lonely weird self. But a bigger part of me knows I wouldn't have wanted to spend any time around that version of myself then or now and that I'd never want to raise a child like me. So yeah. Also part of my CF decision.