I Grew Up Without Anyone Showing Up
And now I don’t know how to let people in
There are moments when you reach for your phone and you already know the outcome.
Not because you’re dramatic. Not because you want attention. Just because something in you is tired, and for a second you think, maybe I should call someone. Maybe I should hear a voice that isn’t mine.
And then your thumb hovers over the screen and you realize you don’t actually know who that “someone” is.
I’m good at being okay. I’m good at functioning. I’m the type of person who shows up, answers messages, gets things done, smiles at the right time, says “yeah, all good” even when it’s not true.
But there’s a difference between being surrounded by people and having someone you can reach for. The kind of person who doesn’t need a reason. The kind of person who doesn’t make you feel like you’re too much the moment you stop being easy.
I have family. I have people at work I can talk to. I can be social. I can be funny. I can blend in.
But when things get heavy, I’m still alone with it.
And I don’t think that happened by accident.
I was born in Croatia in 1985. Three months after I was born, my father left. I have no memory of him. I’ve never met him. He isn’t even a complicated story in my head. He’s just an empty space where a person should have been.
My mother was always working. I still don’t know how to write that without sounding like I’m accusing her. Maybe she did what she had to do. Maybe she had no choice. But as a kid, what I felt was simple. She wasn’t there.
In Croatia, while she worked, I grew up with my grandparents. They took care of me. They were the ones who were present in the daily way. Food. Routine. Someone noticing if you were quiet, or hungry, or sick. When I picture being looked after, I picture them.
Then the war came and everything changed fast. We didn’t just lose stability. We lost the idea that stability exists.
During the war my mother remarried. That’s when I met my stepfather. And I don’t have some huge dramatic story about him. It was quieter than that. He just never cared much about me. Not in the way a kid can feel and trust.
It wasn’t one moment. It was years of small moments. And the absence inside them.
What didn’t happen
We never had birthday parties. Not once. No cake. No candles. No feeling that someone planned anything because it was my day. Just another day where I learned not to expect anything special.
They didn’t come to school shows either. They didn’t come to football matches later. They didn’t show up for the stuff that mattered to a kid because it’s supposed to prove something. That you matter to someone. That you’re worth an hour. That you’re worth leaving the house for.
And if you grow up without that, you learn something dangerous.
You learn to become low maintenance.
You learn to be easy. To not ask. To not need. To never create a situation where somebody could choose you and still not show up.
We moved to Norway in 1993. People call it a fresh start. A new life. A second chance.
What it felt like was being dropped into a place where everyone already knew the rules and I didn’t.
New language. New social codes. New way of joking. New way of making friends. You can live in the same neighborhood and still feel like you’re behind a glass wall watching other people belong.
And I want to be honest here because I don’t want to rewrite my life into a simple tragedy.
When I was a kid, I did have moments of normal. I got invited to birthday parties. I hung out with people. I laughed. I wasn’t completely alone in every single way.
But then people moved. Changed schools. Grew apart. And I lost connection after connection over time.
Some people have parents who hold the social threads for them when they’re young. They invite other kids over. They talk to other parents. They help you stay connected.
I didn’t have that.
So when friendships faded, they just disappeared. No bridge. No second try. Just gone.
Nobody came
I remember a Christmas show at school.
The room smelled like wet coats and paper and dust. Kids whispering. Teachers trying to keep order. Everyone pretending not to be nervous.
You stand under those lights and you look out. You can’t help it.
Not because you want applause. Because you’re looking for one face. One person who came for you.
So you scan the room the way kids do. Row by row. You see other parents leaning forward, already smiling. You see grandparents with proud eyes. You see families that look connected, like they belong to each other.
And then you realize it. Again.
Nobody came.
And you still have to perform. You still have to stand there and do it. You still have to pretend you’re focused, like it doesn’t matter.
But inside you start asking questions you shouldn’t have to ask.
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Did they forget me?
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Did I not tell them right?
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Am I not worth one hour?
And underneath all of that, the question that sits like a stone.
Was I a burden?
I don’t think people understand what that question does to a kid. It doesn’t make you rebel. It doesn’t make you angry in a clean way. It makes you smaller.
It makes you learn how to disappear politely.
A little later, football became the same story in a different setting.
I played football as a teenager in Norway. Every match I checked the sideline. Not even in a hopeful way after a while. More like a habit. Like touching a sore tooth with your tongue, just to confirm it still hurts.
My mother and stepfather didn’t come to one single match. Not once.
Not the small ones. Not the cold ones. Not the ones that didn’t matter.
Not even the one that should have been impossible to miss.
We won the cup. A real trophy. Real celebration. I got a medal.
I remember holding it and feeling the weight of it in my hand. I remember the noise. Parents calling names. Clapping. Cameras. That sound people make when they’re proud.
Boys ran toward the sidelines and got hugged. Some got their hair messed up. Some got lifted up like they were still little kids.
I kept looking anyway.
Same fence. Same people. Not them.
And the stupid part is that even then, with proof in my hand, some part of me still didn’t think, they’re not coming. It thought, maybe they’re late.
That’s the part that humiliates you. Not the fact that they didn’t come. The fact that you still hoped.
I walked home with that medal and I didn’t feel like a winner. I felt like a kid carrying something heavy that nobody cared to see.
And that’s where music started becoming more than music.
Because when you don’t have people, you find something else.
I found my peace and my salvation in music. That was my escape.
Music didn’t require me to be easy. It didn’t require me to be confident. It didn’t care if my language was perfect. It didn’t judge me for being quiet. It didn’t disappear because I asked for too much.
It was there when I got home. It was there when rooms felt too silent. It was there when I couldn’t say what I felt out loud.
Some people had parents who showed up.
I had music.
What it did to me
I started working when I was 16. I didn’t have that normal school rhythm where you see the same people every day and friendships grow on their own. My life was already moving differently than other people’s lives.
Distance builds slowly like that. You don’t notice it until you look around and realize you’re not part of anything. You’re just adjacent to it.
For a while, nightlife became my routine. Late hours. Loud rooms. People everywhere. It can look like a social life. It can look like connection.
Sometimes it’s the opposite.
Sometimes it’s you surrounded by noise, and still going home alone.
And music stayed in the middle of it. It was still the place I could disappear without being judged. The one place that didn’t ask me to explain myself.
I had girlfriends too, mostly turbulent relationships. Closeness, but unstable. The kind where you never fully relax because you’re waiting for the flip. Waiting for the leaving.
In 2018 I met my true love. I’m still with her today. That part of my life is real. It’s steady. It matters to me more than I can explain.
But love doesn’t replace friendship. Not completely. And it doesn’t erase what you learned earlier.
Keeping connections outside of my relationship has always been hard for me. Friendships slip away. Sometimes because life gets busy. Sometimes because I don’t reach out. Sometimes because I don’t know how to reach out without feeling like I’m bothering someone.
And I’ve spent so much of my life being the one who helps everyone else.
Especially my mother. There’s still a language barrier for her, so I’ve helped with everything for years. Calls. Forms. Appointments. Decisions. The constant small responsibilities that build into something heavy over time.
I did it because it felt necessary. Because I’m used to being the one who handles things. Because it’s what I know.
But it also drained me.
I got diagnosed with burnout. I’m recovering from that now.
And this is the part that’s hard to admit. When you’re burned out, you can’t perform strength anymore. You can’t keep the mask on all day and then still have energy left to build a life at night.
When I got quiet, the loneliness got loud.
Because then you notice what’s missing.
You notice that if something happens, you don’t have a person. Not the kind of person you can call and say “I’m not okay” and have them just understand. Not the kind of person who shows up without making you justify your pain.
Sometimes I scroll and see people with friend groups, dinner plans, inside jokes, years of history, and it looks effortless for them.
I’m not jealous in a dramatic way.
I’m confused.
How did you build that? How did you keep it? How did you learn to trust it?
Because my whole life has been me handling things alone, figuring things out alone, surviving things alone, and then acting like it doesn’t hurt.
But it hurts.
I’m tired of pretending I don’t need anything. Tired of the “independent” story. Tired of acting like it’s a personality trait and not a survival skill I never asked for.
I don’t need a crowd. I don’t need a big friend group. I don’t need constant plans.
I want one real friend. One person where it feels mutual and safe and simple. Someone I can call without rehearsing it in my head first.
And maybe the hardest part is that I don’t even know what that would feel like, because I don’t think I’ve ever had it.
So I’ll say it in the most honest way I can.
Sometimes I feel lonely.
Not a bad-week kind of lonely.
A long-time kind of lonely.
Because the truth is, I grew up without anyone showing up.
And now I don’t know how to let people in.
