This weekend, while I was dog‑sitting, I stumbled across a yearbook from the late ’90s. One of those thick, glossy bricks with neon fonts and awkward group photos, the kind that smells like dust, old glue, and a thousand teenage insecurities. I wasn’t expecting it to hit me the way it did, but there I was, sitting on someone else’s couch with someone else’s dog snoring on my foot, flipping through pages of kids I didn’t know… and suddenly thinking about the kid I used to be.

It’s funny how something as simple as a yearbook can pull you straight back into your own hallways, the ones you thought you’d outgrown. I found myself wondering what my life would look like if I had set myself up differently back then. Not in a dramatic, “rewrite my whole timeline” way. More like… I wish I had joined a few more things. Tried out for something. Let myself be seen a little more.

But the truth is, I stayed closed off for survival. Middle school was rough, the kind of rough that teaches you to shrink before anyone else can make you feel small. Being bullied at that age doesn’t just bruise your confidence; it rewires the way you move through the world. Research actually backs this up: kids who experience bullying are more likely to struggle with trust and social connection later in life, and they often carry a heightened sensitivity to rejection into adulthood. It’s not weakness, it’s the brain learning to protect itself.

And then there was my parents’ divorce. I was young, but old enough to understand that something permanent had cracked. Studies show that children of divorce often grow up with a deep awareness of impermanence, a sense that relationships can shift or disappear without warning. It doesn’t doom us, but it does shape us. It teaches us early that nothing is guaranteed, and sometimes that lesson sticks a little too well.

So when I look back now, I get why I didn’t join the clubs or the teams or the after‑school things. I was busy trying to stay safe in a world that felt unpredictable.

Still… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes crave the friend group that so many people seem to still have, the ones who grew up together, stayed together, and still gather for birthdays and barbecues like a living scrapbook. There’s a part of me that aches for that kind of continuity.

But here’s the silver lining, and it’s a bright one: I do have a handful of close friends, the kind you can count on one hand, the kind who show up, the kind who feel like home. And honestly? I wouldn’t trade them for a whole cafeteria table of people who never really knew me.