A world was opening up before me. It was as if Ryan and Lewie had taken me to the threshold of a doorway and said, “Look!”

At that moment I wasn’t sure what that “something” was, but I was beginning to have an idea. As if everything I had come to learn about Ryan, and now Lewie, was captured in that one sentence. But it was only the beginning, one sentence of a larger story.

I’ve never felt like I belong. It’s a feeling, I think, many of us know. It reaches across all of us, reaching far, leaving its mark on significant moments. I’ve carried that feeling with me all my life. And in my effort to close the gap, I’ve overcompensated.