The Sibling Complex
Will I forever be ’The Middle Child’?
Instantly, at the age of three, my entire world ebbed in a way I could never guess. Once the brunt runt of the litter, I would now become a big sister, a B-Line into the ways of a human being for a newborn spit upon this Earth. At that time, my excitement was uncontained as I trained myself up to super-sister status.
Now my thoughts and actions still stem from those same responsibilities I grasped after being faced with a blood-binding baby in my life. I’ve been lucky, fully capable of being steered in all the right directions by an elder brother who protects and a younger sister to nurture. That’s why it’s no surprise I carry all the same traits learned through my siblings into my adult life.
Keeping that in mind, I was quick to analyze the ‘Why?’ behind the learned traits of my sibling and I’s youth and how those traits still thrive in our present lives. So many of our assets get held in accreditation to our parents. Nevertheless, so many of us tend to always fit into our stereotypical sibling roles in the way we live our lives, make our friends, and wholly participate in our communities.
As the middle child and the eldest girl, I grew the nurturing qualities necessary to be a big sister. My youngest sister molded her focus into learning, continuing her educational journey as a teacher duly focused on the student. What keeps us here, tethered to the exact roles our birth order placed us? What keeps us so attached to our sibling complex?
If you are someone who relates to having a brother or a sister occupy your life, the passing time has probably shown the psychological effects of filling those familial roles. Being the big sister, I was taught at the tiniest of ages to become a place of comfort for a sister even more minute than I.
It gets confusing, then, when you step out into the real world and find those same roles of nurturer and teacher always on your shoulders. Then the understanding finally hits you, that those roles stay with you to twist themselves into a learned behavior. All of it accumulates, traces itself back to childhood, and extraordinarily grows to make or break the person you become in your adult life.
Surely enough, here all we siblings sit in the present, still attempting to fill the same roles placed into in childhood. Now, how do we mirror those familial learnings as we collide with the rest of the world? It seems as if those same assets amass into the people we become within our lives, leading us to utilize our purest traits, the ones learned in childhood. We’re left with our elder brothers becoming providers for their communities, scooping up skills to lend out to those in need. Middle siblings like myself stay teachers, accruing enough knowledge to spit out into the world.
The youngest sibling, in a turn of events, tends to come out the wisest of all. With only the intent to learn, our youngest siblings get to be the tight bow to tie up the family unit, placing positive pictures of each family member back into the palm of their hands. They’re a reminder of what makes an entire family so close-knit, with the freedom to grow into the best parts of every person privileged to raise them.
So here I am, out in this wide adult world, fully embracing my sibling complex. I may always fill my same middle-sibling role, but it’s something I’ve learned to wear with pride. Not everyone has the same story of unity with their siblings as I do, and so I’m blessed to carry only the positive into the communities I’m honored to inhabit.
Hopefully, becoming the best version of my ordained role can make the difference I want to see in the world surrounding me. All the same, I avidly cheer on all the brothers and sisters, old and young, who live their sibling complex positively. With early throes of learning how to live not just for ourselves, I believe we complex siblings are the key to sustaining our communities.