Growing up as the only girl in the family is really nice. It indirectly means that there are no comparison between the prettier daughter, the nicer daughter, the cleverer daughter etc. Literally a blessing.

Gladly, I have 2 brothers who aren't any better than me in the aspects that I'm good at - which means I'm the better one in academic and rather at par with my brother in terms of our extracurricular. Heck I even entered a public speaking competition representing my school once while my brother represented his, and I won 3rd place while he didn't. Idk how that miraculously happened but in my eyes, I'm confident that what he can do, I can do better.

Sadly, my family really don't see me being the "better child". 

In fact, me winning a competition alone < my brother participating in a team competition, or 

me getting better CGPA and dean's list for 4 sem < my brother with 1 dean's list on the 1 semester I did badly on. Yeah, I get compared to and things I am proud of are degraded instead.

But I'm always told that they love us equally, yet they don't act like they do. Are parents always this hypocritical?

I didn't even realize it hurts my self-esteem as much as it did until years later. I always thought I should do better and show more impressive results then maybe, they'll see my capability and acknowledge it one day. And honestly, in my 23 years of life, that almost never happened. Yet I never stopped trying my best anyway, bcos I reap what I sow. What I do today is for future me to gain, not for my parents or anyone else.

It's when I realize that my parents will never celebrate my achievements with me despite how big or small it is, that makes me stop hoping. It's nice when people tell me that my parents are so supportive when they let me do whatever I want, but little do people know, they really don't care what I do. And I get hurt by that too.

The bright side is that I'm forced to grow up faster knowing that they aren't an option for me to turn back to. 

It's funny how families don't have to have a constant argument or even be broken, for it to be hopeless. But at the end of the day, they are always our biggest weakness and I genuinely despise that.

Dropping by,