My name is Marco Dane.

I’m 25, single, and unemployed.

I live with my older brother Max, a self-sustainable, painter, divorcee, and father. His daughter Dericka lives primarily with her mother, but visits every weekend.

I also live with a writer, Max’s best friend, and fellow divorcee, Alan Eberly.

Together, we’re a threesome. A dynamic three-o, or something or other.

But living with two very successful people when you’ve been down on your luck with pretty much everything in life is a very difficult thing to deal with.

Ever since Max was 8, and I was 4, I could recall him repeating these words,

“When I grow up, I’m going to paint for a living!”

At the time, during those childish wonder years where anything was possible and nothing was too far to reach, too expensive to own, or too powerful to use, I found delight in his positive nature. He often asked me what I would grow up to be, and I would say,

“I’m gonna be a dinosaur.”

Years passed by. Max’s mantra of “When I grow up, I’m going to paint for a living” slowly evolved into “I will be an artist someday.”

And he repeated this to himself, day after day. He painted every chance he got, he was constantly doodling and staring at the walls, imagining with his mind’s eye what he could paint there if Mom told him it would be okay to deface the house.

By the time he was 14, he had achieved more than I could ever dream of at 24. He won an art competition at school, first prize in fact. Where as some kids sold lemonade on their front lawn, he was out there selling his paintings. He then saved all his money in an “Art School Fund Box.”

Once I reached 14, I was still pretty sure that I was going to be a dinosaur.

Then the day came when Max went off to art school. He was 19 years old, intelligent, confident, bold, and forced to wear shades from the shear brightness of his future.

At 19, my mom had to call an ambulance because I got my head stuck in the stair railing.

Now, before you call me an idiot or say I’m just lazy, I didn’t spent all my life playing video games, smoking weed, and eating pizza.

I spent some of my life doing that, but not all of it.

For the most part, my mother enabled my bleak future and social inabilities, I was the baby, and with her oldest off in some fancy art school out of state, she appreciated having a son who was willing to feed off her teat for as long as she could provide it.

That’s a metaphor, by the way, I’m not a creep.

My father, by the way, was never in the picture. He left my mother when I was very young, and never bothered to get involved in my life. I only know what he looks like because of a picture my mom kept on the wall in the kitchen of him holding me as a newborn, and looking like his life had just been destroyed.

In contrast, there was another picture of him in the living room. It’s more of a side profile of him, but you can clearly see a smile on his face.

And laying down in his arms, smiling back at him, was Max.

I sometimes wondered if I hadn’t been born, if my dad had stayed. Maybe he only wanted Max, maybe he couldn’t handle me.

I spent a lot of my time feeling like an unwanted child.

In adulthood, I look back at this and realize that this twisted thinking is probably what lead me to being such a screw up in the first place. I never had goals because I never had motivation, I never had motivation because I felt unwanted, I felt unwanted because I convinced myself that my father left us because of me.

When I turned 20, things took a turn for the worst. Mom got really sick, and Max, along with his new wife Christine, moved in to help care for her. It was during this time that Christine got pregnant with Dericka, which cheered Mom up a lot.

After Mom started getting better, Max and Christine moved out, along with little Dericka. They bought a home close by, and frequently visited Mom and I to make sure everything was going well.

Then one day, Max came by alone.

He sat me down in my room, and with a sigh, he said,

“Christine and I are getting a divorce. She’s moving out, and I can’t live in that house alone.”

He insisted that this become my step towards independence.

I refused, I really didn’t want to leave mom’s wing yet. I was 21, sure, but I convinced myself I was a late bloomer, and declined his offer.

Then Max went to Mom about it.

And Mom kicked me out.

About a year went by, just Max and I, his divorce finalized and he tried pushing me to get a job.

The constant flow of enter application, get no response, leave resume with employer, get no response, was becoming quite tiring. When even McDonald’s doesn’t want to hire you, you start feeling really low about yourself.

But the true depression of feeling like absolute cat waste didn’t really hit me until Alan Eberly, Max’s good friend, decided to move in with us too, along with his dog Paul. He had been living on his own for a year and was fed up with feeling alone all the time, so he joined the duo and here we are today.

But here’s the thing, Alan was an overnight success. He went from working a 9-5 job to becoming a world famous author on accident. Sure he went through a messy divorce, but the man now has a perfect career and no worries in life.

I often peek in on him in the office, and there he is, typing away at the computer, post-it notes coating the wall, his dog with a chew toy laying down next to him, and a cup of warm tea placed gingerly on his desk.

This man was the living image of success.

I’d also sometimes peek in on my brother, standing there in nothing but a pair of red boxers, looking up at a massive canvas, a wooden palette in his right hand, a blue tipped paintbrush in his left, the image of a abstract woman coming to life in front of him.

This man also was the living image of success.

Then I walk into the bathroom. I take a deep breath, and I look in the mirror.

I nod my head, not remembering quite when I grew a 1-inch beard, or why I had a burn mark on my cheek.

This man right here, was apparently the living image of a dinosaur.