so in school right now in ela we’re getting taught on isms like racism, sexism, genderism, that sort of thing. and people are talking about discrimination and just, how life is really unfair.
what nobody really mentions is the difference between siblings. or, if you may, the sibling gap.
i know there are a lot of great things about being the older sibling. and i’m not super pissed off or anything about it, since there’s something about watching a mini version of yourself grow and go through what you went through. but sometimes you just gotta complain about it cause it really is quite unbalanced. and i just don’t see people discussing it.
what i’m getting at is the unfortunate reality that we older siblings seriously are the guinea pigs. the older you get, especially once you get to almost-high-school and things start getting stressful, the more palpable that fact is.
you watch your parents watch you and watch them and you can almost see the thought bubble appearing above their heads since that’s what you would think too. that the same mistakes cannot happen again on the younger sibling the same way that the older suffered from it. so they will do everything to prevent it, use the experience that they have accumulated throughout the years to perfect the younger child.
there’s nothing wrong with that, on an objective and beneficial level. it’s perfectly natural and instinctual for a human being to want things to get better over time. oh the first child didn’t sign up for this and regretted it? then we must have the second do it. in fact i would be concerned if you didn’t want your children to improve and didn’t impart your full wisdom and advice to them.
however, that knowledge still doesn’t help lessen the damage it often does to older siblings like me. knowing that it isn’t intentional doesn’t help when your sibling recieves more opportunities and head starts compared to you and you feel like a loser about it. it’s just like watching your younger sibling get taller than you.
but of course, it can’t be changed. that will always be how things work — you as an older sibling will stumble off into more forks in the dusty road, you will get lost in a massive forest of greenery, you will walk down on paths only to find it a dead end. in comparsion the younger sibling will find a paved sidewalk for them, a neatly trimmed and pruned trail, and they will have a map too. this trail came to exist because of your own difficult groping through the bushes and they will tread in your footsteps toward their success. there still will be cracks where they may trip and fall, but often they do not land as hard as you when you are trying to find your way blindly through.
and there’s nothing you can do about any of that.
so that’s why i’ve learned to accept it, live with it, make it part of myself knowing that i come out of it stronger if i go through the struggles myself without protections or shields. realize that this is the reason why younger siblings are always referred to as spoiled. they’re not spoiled, not really, they’ve just recieved too much well-intended help from not only their parents but also their older siblings throughout their childhood.
it’s like the chinese saying of 披荆斩棘. what it basically means is you say, holy crap there’s a bunch of stuff in my way, and then you roll up your sleeves and then clear it the hell out of the the path. or, in other words, overcoming obstacles. it’s guaranteed that as an older sibling, you’ll probably have more chances to do this than a younger one, so sometimes it helps to not think of the extra work and wasted time that you had to commit to as a burden, but instead as a way for your little seed in the garden to grow and thrive and to be able to adapt to a more hostile environment.
so, to close this little brainstorm up, here’s my new variant of the lemon saying:
when life gives you lemons, taste it first, hand it to your younger sibling and warn them about its sourness, and be glad that you got to experience the flavor firsthand without it getting spoiled by someone else. then chuck it away, take your sibling’s hand, and walk through the winding paths, helping each other out, until you both are out of those goddamn lemon woods together.
thank you and good night,
♡ xea 猫猫
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