My mother left home when I was ten. Things weren't great before that, but the way it happened and what came after turned that event into the defining moment.

I was the youngest, and the only boy. Three older sisters. Two of those sisters left home around the same time, the third a couple of years later, leaving me in the house with just my father.

My father was a strange man, very withdrawn and ineffectual. I don't think he wanted kids, and I'm sure he didn't want me. He was weird and nervous about things. For instance, he would only allow us to take baths once a week, if that, because he was worried about the septic tank. It didn't make much sense.

My mother decided to leave. That is quite unusual. I have never heard a story quite like it. Any book about abandonment is automatically about girls abandoned by their fathers. Mothers just didn't decide to leave. She wasn't in jail or deported or anything. She just moved away, to another town about 40 miles away.

She didn't announce it. She literally never said goodbye. She just wasn't there, and I only found out it was 'official' by overhearing one end of a phone conversation.

She was always the victim. This was central to her personality. It is difficult to describe how forbidden, how taboo it was to even mention the fact that she left. She was a deeply manipulative person. Making Mom feel bad was beyond the ultimate sin. My sisters bought into this, and on the rare occasions that I dared to admit I was hurt, they (one in particular) would attack. How dare you, she tries so hard, and other insane nonsense with no relation to reality.

I had been the baby, the only boy, and within a short time I was less than nothing. It was like driving along at 90mph and slamming into reverse. It twisted me, mangled and ruined me.

I remember Knowing. I capitalize the word. The Knowing. I was maybe 11, and without words I knew. I Knew. It was all a lie. All the times she read stories to me and did the voices. All the cookies she made, or knees she put bandaids on. It was all a lie.

I couldn't put that into words, at 11. It was just this sense of Knowing, and it was far more than I could handle. A crushing reality, like a toddler trying to hold up a Buick.

I had been fooled. Cruelly, consummately fooled. I do not know just what her agenda had been, but it was something born of a twisted mind. I think now that she believed she was supposed to be a mother, and she just wasn't. She kept up the act for a while, and then had enough and left.

I was fifteen before we had any conversation about it.

One day I had a mother. Then I had a very occasional voice on the phone. Quite often she would be on the phone, talking to one or more of my sisters, and when my turn came it was 'too much long distance charges' or she 'had to go'. I only got to talk to her if I had some crisis or other. If I had an emotional outburst, my father would call her and hand me the phone. She would cry and say I made things so hard for her, made her feel bad. Then I would hear from my one sister, disgusted at how I hurt sainted Mother.

I had a bedwetting problem. It ended up lasting till I was 16. I think this was part of the reason she left. After she left, my father didn't bother with things like going to laundromats much. I lived in utter filth. I descended into isolated shame. I quit school and shut out the world.

I trusted no one. I reacted to a smile with suspicion. Girls were a source of brutal shame and terrifying risk. I became a muttering crazy homeless man, off and on. I've been in mental hospitals, worked at various shitty jobs, managed to spend my time alone. I've gone entire calendar years without speaking to another person.

I am 46 now. I made some attempt over the last few years to come out of my shell. But I'm far too nervous, weird, hesitant and creepy, and it is far too late. I missed every boat there is. I made some friends, but even they are inevitably uncomfortable around me, and being around people just provides constant reminders of what I am and what I will never have.

So I have allowed those friendships to dwindle, and I have gone back to my isolation. I wonder sometimes what it would be like, to be human, and get hugs, and all that. I can't stand to see it or think about it much. It's just better if I stay alone.