Growing up, I was left in the shadows, the unremarkable middle child in a stack of five annoyingly talented kids. I had two older sisters and two younger brothers, and as such, I slipped into the background of our family without much consequence.

I was the third girl, unremarkable in its own right, sentenced to wear hand-me-down clothes and never have the chance to form an identity of my own. Couple that with the fact that I had two brothers born not too long after me, the boys my parents had prayed for, and you could say I was as invisible as the dust collecting on the top of a ceiling fan. I only seemed to be noticed when I got in the way, when my presence became a nuisance or flared up someone’s allergies.

Still, I didn’t feel bitter growing up. The comparison game never really got to me. I thought it was spectacular that my oldest sister, Meghan, excelled at softball and went on to play in college, receiving a full-ride scholarship. I was in awe of my second oldest sister, Laura, getting into MIT. I knew without a doubt that she’d change the world with her passion for science engineering. And I had nothing but love for my younger brothers, Travis and Patrick, who were little inventors set to appear on Shark Tank once they got the right million-dollar idea hammered out.

If anything, I kind of loved existing in the forgotten space in-between. No one bothered me when I locked myself in my room for the weekend, reading and watching documentaries. With all my parents’ attention on my siblings, I was free to use my time exploring the world and what makes it tick, which was my favorite thing to do — aside from getting lost in a smutty, taboo romance novel.

It drove my mom insane that I didn’t have direction when I left for college. She also didn’t particularly like that I’d pulled away from the church when I was in high school, thanks to my self-education in religion and newfound questions that neither she nor our pastor could answer. Add in the fact that she found a gritty motorcycle club romance stuffed under my pillow and read a scene that made her clutch her pearls before declaring I was banned from reading anything like this ever again! And I guess you could say we weren’t exactly close.

But, to her credit, she didn’t spend much effort on trying to steer me toward a career path or toward the church, not before she’d sigh and give up and turn her focus back to one of her God-fearing children who had a good head on their shoulders.

What she couldn’t see, what no one could see, was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life yet because I didn’t know enough about life itself.