The Kid With the Kleenex

Hello there, Standing on the Ledge. How are you now?

I’m in a reflective mood today. And I keep circling the same question: who is this “Lugh / Kevin” guy supposed to be? What’s he actually about?

If I’m going to give any context at all, I have to start where my story feels like it begins: I was the kid in preschool with hearing and speech issues. Tubes in my ears. Adenoids out. Constant ear infections, sinus infections, always running, always a Kleenex in hand. And kids can smell “different” like blood in the water.

From preschool up through about grade six or seven, it felt like I lived under a single repeating sentence: What’s wrong with you? I got tormented. I got labeled. I got compared. “Why can’t you be more like your older brother?”

He was the smart one. The liked one. The one people expected things from — and then they expected the same from me, but only in the form of comparison. I became “the rebel,” “the troublemaker,” the kid who didn’t do well in school. And the worst part wasn’t even the kids. It was the feeling that no adult in the building had my back. No teacher stepped in hard enough to change the weather.

I thought high school would break the spell. New place, new start. But the reputation arrived before I did. And even after my brother died, the shadow of that stigma didn’t disappear. It just changed shape.

And now here I am, writing Standing on the Ledge, and I can feel those old voices trying to climb back into the driver’s seat: “What makes you an expert?” “Why should anyone listen to you?”

I’ve asked people I respect to look at what I’m building. Nothing. Silence. And the old conclusion tries to form itself like it always did: Here you go again—on your own.

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The Sociological Lens

This is the part we don’t talk about enough: school isn’t just a place where you learn math and spelling. It’s a sorting machine. It hands out roles. It labels kids. It creates reputations that stick, and then treats those reputations like “personality,” not context.

When you’re the kid with visible differences (speech, hearing, health stuff), you don’t just get bullied — you get marked. And once you’re marked, everything you do gets interpreted through that mark. You’re not “having a bad day.” You’re “that kid.”

And when teachers and adults fail to intervene, it isn’t neutral. It’s a social signal. It teaches the whole room who is safe to target, who is worth defending, and what kind of pain is allowed to happen without consequence.

The comparison to a high-performing sibling adds another layer: you’re not measured against yourself — you’re measured against a standard you didn’t choose, inside a story you didn’t write. That’s not just “family pressure.” It’s a social script that can follow you for years.

The Psychological Lens

Psychologically, a childhood like that can build a fast internal scanner: always watching for rejection, always trying to predict where the next hit is coming from. Over time, the external voices become internal. The bully doesn’t have to show up — the echo does it for them.

So when I feel that “what makes you an expert?” line flare up in my head, I don’t treat it like truth. I treat it like a familiar reflex — a protection strategy from a younger version of me who learned that visibility can be dangerous.

And the silence from people I value? That can land like proof. But it isn’t always proof. Sometimes it’s just… silence. People are busy. People avoid. People don’t know what to say. The brain that grew up under comparison and neglect will try to turn that into a verdict. That’s the shame-ledger doing what it does best: rewriting the world so it confirms the wound.

What I’m Doing With It Now

I don’t know if this post “solves” anything. But I’m saying it anyway. I’m naming it. Because naming it is how I stop living inside it.

And maybe that’s what this project really is: not a claim of expertise, but a refusal to let the old script be the only script. A way to build something honest out of what I survived — and to offer tools that do more than give people a dopamine hit.

No help for you, Lugh? Maybe. But also: you’re still here. You’re still building. And that counts as evidence.

That’s it for this post. Godspeed.