#MiddleChildProblems

If you didn’t already know. I am the middle child. Somewhat.

Both of my parents remarried after their divorce. While my mom didn’t have any more children, my dad did.

Lately I realized that my friendship with my brother is dwindling. We used to be super close. We even have matching tattoos, we like the same music, we enjoy the same nerdy things, and love the same Chicago baseball team. But like most friendships, friendships with your siblings can also go sour.

I used to be super nice. Like, I wouldn’t ever make anyone feel bad on purpose. The bad thing about that (being nice) is that people start taking advantage of it. They start sucking everything out of you, niceness, friendlyness, money, assets.

My brother fell on hard times, and I decided to help him out. No one asked me to, and he promised to pay me back every cent. This was a few years ago. As you can guess, I haven’t even seen a dollar of that. It makes me sad that this is the reason that we no longer have a friendship, and that I’m slowly considering dissowning him. Because really, he’s MY older brother. HE should be helping ME out.
I always thought that because we’re closer in age, and we have the same mom and dad, that we’d always be there for each other. And that we’d always be like BFF’s. But I think that it’s not longer like that.

I had come to be comfortable being the only girl. Then my little sister was born. I was jealous of her for a bit. I don’t know why. I guess, in my mind, I felt that I now had to share my space with her. Which, really, my space was nowhere near her. Now we’re almost inseperable despite having been born a decade apart.

Last weekend, she told me that her first memory of me was when I was baby sitting her and I took her to Wendy’s. She remembers this the most because, as she said, “it was the first day we went without fighting”. She now shares her secrets with me and asks for advice about boys and even now I find myself confiding in her too.

I never thought that the girl I was so jealous of would now be one of my best friends. Then again, I never thought that I wouldn’t have my older brother as my best friend. And now, while my relationship with my baby sister is growing, I fear that it will end up as tragic as the one I have with my brother.

Isn’t my job to make sure that no one hurts my sister? But what if I end up hurting her the way my brother hurt me?