confessions of a half-only child

i am my mother's only child & the youngest of my father's seven children.

i've always struggled with this concept. by the time i was born, my six half-sibs (or as i used to think of them, 3 half-brothers + 3 half-sisters = 1.5 brothers + 1.5 sisters) were grown enough not to be living at home. not my home, anyway. they existed in some other world, some other dimension. i saw them during holidays, funerals and other functions where the entire "family" (and i use this term loosely) was required to be seen together.

being my mother's only child and the only child left for my father to support financially, i was spoiled. my parents are not and have never been rich, so it isn't like i got everything i asked for, but i was definitely indulged. the differences between the half-sibs growing up poor and my growing up in a lower-middle class household has always been an unspoken point of contention, and i'm not going to feel bad about it. i benefitted from being born a generation apart from them, but that was basically out of my control. besides feeling out of place around them, i had plenty of other issues growing up as an only child.