Sometimes his life just plain sucked. No two ways about it.
When people looked at him they very rarely saw him. They saw what they wanted to see, or what he wanted them to see.
Don't get him wrong, he never out right lied to them, he was truly terrible at lying, but showing half truths or leaving out important information about himself and his past was something that he had become expert at over the past thirty something years of his life.
To a lot of people looking in at his life he'd had it made. He came from money, went to good schools, did all the right things, the right activities, he had it easy, had things handed to him, didn't have to try to get what he wanted, got top grades at school, had lots of friends.
But looks can be deceptive.
He'd learned early to hide the bruises or evidence of physical injury, to hide what he was feeling from those around him. Sure he occasionally slip and reveal something from his past or some emotion would slip out that he hadn't been fast enough to hide from those around him, but he'd learned how to make light of it or evade the questions that would follow and change the track of the conversation without answering the other peoples questions.
He'd also learned at an early age that the only person that he could truly rely on, to trust, was himself. People left you, hurt you, could turn against you, ignore you. Fail you.
In the grand scheme of things he had no illusions as to where he stood. Anthony DiNozzo did not matter. Hell, he'd been an accident, his parents hadn't wanted children, especially not at the time he'd come along. They had been enjoying the high life that they were leading. They went to different parties every night, weekend trips to exotic locations whenever they felt the urge to up and go, a business that was making millions of dollars every day, and enough influence to get just about anything they wanted from whoever they wanted.
To be fair his mother had done her best to love her baby, to show him he was loved, but then when he was six his mother had died in a car accident. Well the official report had been that it was an accident, but he'd always had doubts about it.
One of the last things his mother had done had been to decorate his bedroom in Louis XV style, canopy bed and all. The room had given him nightmares, but he'd learned quickly not to let his parents know when he'd had one. The nightmares were easier to handle and hide than the results of his father finding out.
His father had never failed to let him know exactly how he felt. He made sure that Anthony knew that he was nothing more than a mistake, one that never failed to disappoint or anger. Made it known that his behaviour was not appropriate, his grades not good enough, his friends not socially elite enough, his actions not appropriate.
Hell, when his father had been between marriages/girlfriends and he'd been unable to find alternate care for his son and he'd been forced to take him along he'd forgotten him, and had only realised what he'd done when he'd gotten the room service bill, or a call from the hotel. The worst part of that had been that it had happened not once, not even twice but four times by the time that Tony was ten.
By the time that he was twelve his father had made it clear that Anthony DiNozzo did not meet his standards for a son, and unless he changed his ways he would not be getting anything from him.
The last straw had been when he'd chosen not to go to Harvard or one of the other Ivy League colleges but Ohio State on a Sports Scholarship, his father had disowned him and told him not to bother ever asking him for anything ever again.
Not that Tony had to ask his father for money, he had several trust funds that had been set up for him by his grandparents, an uncle and his mother that his father could not touch. He had access to the first one at eighteen, which meant that even without his scholarship he didn't need to apply for student loans or work his way through school. He ended up doing a double major of Physical Education and Criminology. Though whenever asked what he'd done at college he'd only say he'd done the Physical Education, and unless pushed would never admit that he'd graduated near the top of his class.