Cursed
18 August 2005 10:57 pm
Sometimes being the eldest child in the family feels like a curse.
First of all, nothing you do is ever good enough for your parents. If you get 90 out of 100 in a class test, they ask you how come you couldn't get full marks. If you make it to university, they expect you to get a PhD. If you graduate with Honours, they wonder why it isn't First Class Honours. You give them money every month and they ask why so little, why not more. You pay all the bills, yet you get locked out of the house if you come home in the wee hours of the morning. You devote yourself to work, and they ask you why you don't have a boyfriend. You find yourself a boyfriend, and they think he's not good-looking enough, smart enough, nice enough, rich enough, Malay enough, Muslim enough, or fair-skinned enough, or they think he's just simply wrong for you (i.e. for them). You break up, and they lament the fact that they will never get grandchildren from you. You find another boyfriend and they get all judgemental on your boyfriend again.
The eldest child is just never good enough. By virtue of the fact that we have lived the longest among all our parents' children, we are remembered as their heaviest burden, and are expected to give more to make up for all the time and effort and money spent raising us. It's okay for the middle child or the youngest child to screw up, BUT THE ELDEST CHILD SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
This isn't just my experience. It is the experience of all my female friends who are eldest children. The irony is, we are the ones who fulfill most of our parents' expectations, while younger siblings will fall short by wider and wider margins the younger they are. Why aren't our parents proud of us? Why are they not grateful? Are we so frightening because we can do it all that our parents have to make us feel small just so they can control us?
I just don't get it.
It gets tiring, you know. It's not as if we're bottomless wells of money and goodwill and filial piety. At some point I want to stop supporting my family and pass the responsibility on to my younger siblings. I want to raise a family too, you know. And I don't see why my other siblings should escape contributing to the family income just because they're younger than me. Everyone grows up and becomes older eventually.
Some parents like to strike fear and guilt into their children's hearts by telling them to imagine what life would be like if they were dead. Sometimes, for a change, they should imagine what life would be like if their first-borns were dead.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006