Familial Bonds

By: Freda Manu

| Silhouette siblings sitting by the beach during sunset |

When I tell people I’m the youngest sibling they always talk about how lucky I am and how it must be nice having older siblings or being your ‘parents' favorite’. I agree, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great being the youngest of 4 but I feel as if I’m constantly living in their shadow. Since all of my siblings have achieved amazing feats, and have gone and graduated from exceptional colleges, I always feel like I weigh not only their achievements but my parent's expectations on my shoulders. It's humbling to look at my accomplishments and then stare at the mountains of things my siblings have done in their lifetime. It’s also crazy being the youngest of 4 because my eldest brother is 8 years older than me! I’ll never forget how we used to fight just to be able to watch our favorite show or how my sister hauled everyone out of the shared bedroom so she could binge Pretty Little Liars or how me and my brother used to fight over who'd use the computer first. We’d quarrel over every little thing and for a while there wasn’t a moment of peace in our house, but childishly, our fighting brought us together. But when me and my siblings matured, it felt like all of those silly things we once cared about just didn’t matter anymore. We all aged out of it and moved on to our things.

When we all came of age, I lost all of the childhood bonds I once shared with them and they seemed to grow out of the many things the younger me was still into. My sister stopped playing with her American Girl doll and instead left it to me, and my brothers and I stopped playing online games together. They were all focused on school, college, applications, or jobs, among other things. When my sister went to college in 2019 I realized how much I missed having an older sister in the house. My entire life I looked up to my sister and in a way aspired to be like her. Unlike the rest of my family who had healthcare as their career path, my sister was into law. She would always tell our parents about how she wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice and for a while I used to mimic my sister telling my parents about how I wanted to be a ‘lawyer’ or a ‘judge’ wanting so badly to feel just a little validation or feel some sort of relation from my sister. But for some reason, despite our DNA and blood binding us together, it felt like we had virtually nothing in common. This perhaps is why when my sister finally went to college it hurt because, by the time she left, we were already losing closeness with each other. By the time she came home for Thanksgiving break, I could feel the divide between not only her but the rest of my siblings. They were all closer in age and as a result, had similar interests and ideas in a way leaving me stranded all by myself. It was hard getting older, but even harder to grow up with people who were completely different from me despite us sharing the same last name. It was tough rebuilding relationships with them because we all had different interests, ideas, and thoughts and it was so hard to understand them with their new enjoyments. I think the hardest was with my sister. My brothers were always close with each other, so that left me and my sister to foster our own camaraderie.

What I wasn’t aware of was that she had grown up while I was still left reeling with the struggle of dealing with teenagehood by myself. She was into makeup and social media when at the time I hadn't received my first phone yet. It was like two sides of the same coin. Even though she only stayed for around a week, that's when I realized I began to comprehend the polarizing divide between all of us. Maybe that's why it felt so hard to reconnect with them and to finally feel like I was growing up and I was gaining these same interests. It felt like around them, I was forced to hide myself into a shell and shy away from them and attempt to know people better. It was hard being able to live up to all of my siblings and all of their accomplishments. I’m glad I was able to reconnect but sometimes I feel like I am stuck in that same hole that I can never dig myself out of, knowing the weight of everything weighs on me despite everything successful that I have done, I know it’s hard to measure myself to everything that they’ve done but knowing that they are constantly watching over me and that they care for me really helps me get out of this slump. I think that despite us all parting ways in terms of interests, our familial bonds end up bringing us together in the end and show that no matter what, I’ll always have my siblings on my side.