shiny_quill
Member
- Jun 21, 2023
- 47
I never wanted to be perceived, or remembered. I think it's because I always was the weird kid; I'm a middle child, but with so many disabilities that I always got way too much attention growing up, to the point my siblings resented me for it, and I tried to deflect some of that attention back on them, but they never acknowledged it, and I just got tired of it.
My older sister dared me to risk my life for her approval. My younger sister always picked on me, trying to get me mad so that I'd scream at her or hit her or do anything to her so that she could go to our parents and get some of the attention she was being denied. The only one who never resented me for getting so much attention was my baby brother and holy fuck do I love him. I hate that I have some a clear preference for one of my siblings, but he's the only one in my family who has consistently treated me as a person and never gotten mad if I refused to do something for him, the only one who loved me unconditionally, the only one whose attention felt soft and warm and not empty and cold. He's the only person in my family I ever told I was going to go out my own volition, and one of the only 2 who know me IRL to be aware of that... We've grown a bit appart recently, and I know that's normal, but I'm worried sick about him. He's almost an adult, but he's still my baby brother to me, and I'll always want the best for him, even if the best might mean hurting him on the short term. I've no idea why I'm even typing this, this is so far from what I originally wanted to say, but I guess I just needed this out? Anyhow.
My mother is a photographer. She became one when I was a child, and used to take me to her night classes for some obscure reason, but I don't remember my siblings going? We might have had a system where she'd take us separately? I don't remember, it doesn't matter, but what matters is that, because I was there (with my dinosaur coloring books), she used to love taking pictures of me, and I hated it. She'd hang them in the toilets, and I'd go steal a stool to tear them down the walls, it genuinely made me feel sick. I felt awful about being perceived, like it was some inconvenience to everyone around me, and it took me years to realize why that was, but for some reason I still feel guilty about being perceived. There are pictures of everyone but me at home, art and childhood momentos from everyone except me, yet I still feel guilty about taking up space. I never got an apology from my sisters for how they treated me as a child. They're both adults now, and have admitted they knew what they were doing, but still, neither of them apologized to me. I hate myself for being mad, I wasn't kind to them either, but now that I know that I literally never started anything, I can't help feeling like I'm a victim here, and maybe I am?
During the pandemic, while we were in lockdown, my older sister was failing school quite spectacularly. I felt awful about it, she had made an attempt on her life (I think with Ibuprofen? Nothing drastic) and missed months of schools, then had to change school, then there was the lockdown, and I thought Life was being awfully unfair to her, so when she asked for my help with her homework, I put aside my own to help her. She never liked reading, and she had to read a book and write a report in the form of a travel diary written from the protagonist's perspective, which she asked me to do. I love reading; naturally, I had no issue with this. I only asked her with help for my math homework, since I have dyspraxia and we were doing trigonometry and I had a hard time drawing the lines, so I asked if she could do that for me, and I'd just... Tell her what I wanted her to do, which she agreed to— she later used this to blackmail me into redoing her book report all over because the formatting was "wrong", despite the fact I had spent my whole week-end on it, having done literally nothing else but work on her report, eat, drink, and sleep (I didn't even shower, I just wanted to get it done with), threatening to send an e-mail to my math teacher saying she did my homework for me if I didn't. I ended up crying over this so much I threw up, but we did reach a compromise and I changed the formatting (I still failed math that year, and was forced to attend summer classes). The teacher LOVED what I did, praising my sister to no end, even sending an email to my parents (who knew about the ruse) to tell them about how their "daughter" was a prodigy and absolutely HAD to pursue a literary career, because it would be such a waste not to. This made me feel so happy I forgot about how upset working on this made me feel, and I even agreed to help her do a video call with her teacher, during which I sat in a corner of her room with a whiteboard, writing the answers for her. This was so incredibly stressful, but also very silly (I have no idea how the teacher didn't suspect a thing, but hey), and it made me feel like maybe I did have talent after all.
I spent years writing fanfics as training for when I would finally get a creative idea, but all my ideas... Well they kind of suck. I still write them, for fun, but now with the rise of AI, I find myself wondering if I'm even good enough to do this. I have shitty ideas based around my hyperfixations, a maybe OK writing style for an highschooler, and every now and then I still get praise (one of my teacher once told me she was "almost sad" I passed her class because she really liked how I answered questions, saying that my responses were "almost literature") but it feels a bit hollow. I don't think anyone would like my ideas, but I keep getting them, and getting enthused about them, but then I lack motivation because someone could do it better now, without even doing any work... But what no one can copy is my life. So, if I ever get better, I want to write about it, but not as an autobiography, no, rather as a cheesy romance between a ghost and a zombie, where the more the story progresses, the clearer it becomes that they're actually the same person, and it's actually about self-love, and it's a bit cringey when taken at face value, but it's actually a bit deep once you get the knowledge that those were one person, and that it was never actually about romantic love, it's about my journey, and I can finally feel good about being perceived because, no, it's not actually about me silly, it's about a zombie and a ghost it's about me, I deserve love, even from myself.
My older sister dared me to risk my life for her approval. My younger sister always picked on me, trying to get me mad so that I'd scream at her or hit her or do anything to her so that she could go to our parents and get some of the attention she was being denied. The only one who never resented me for getting so much attention was my baby brother and holy fuck do I love him. I hate that I have some a clear preference for one of my siblings, but he's the only one in my family who has consistently treated me as a person and never gotten mad if I refused to do something for him, the only one who loved me unconditionally, the only one whose attention felt soft and warm and not empty and cold. He's the only person in my family I ever told I was going to go out my own volition, and one of the only 2 who know me IRL to be aware of that... We've grown a bit appart recently, and I know that's normal, but I'm worried sick about him. He's almost an adult, but he's still my baby brother to me, and I'll always want the best for him, even if the best might mean hurting him on the short term. I've no idea why I'm even typing this, this is so far from what I originally wanted to say, but I guess I just needed this out? Anyhow.
My mother is a photographer. She became one when I was a child, and used to take me to her night classes for some obscure reason, but I don't remember my siblings going? We might have had a system where she'd take us separately? I don't remember, it doesn't matter, but what matters is that, because I was there (with my dinosaur coloring books), she used to love taking pictures of me, and I hated it. She'd hang them in the toilets, and I'd go steal a stool to tear them down the walls, it genuinely made me feel sick. I felt awful about being perceived, like it was some inconvenience to everyone around me, and it took me years to realize why that was, but for some reason I still feel guilty about being perceived. There are pictures of everyone but me at home, art and childhood momentos from everyone except me, yet I still feel guilty about taking up space. I never got an apology from my sisters for how they treated me as a child. They're both adults now, and have admitted they knew what they were doing, but still, neither of them apologized to me. I hate myself for being mad, I wasn't kind to them either, but now that I know that I literally never started anything, I can't help feeling like I'm a victim here, and maybe I am?
During the pandemic, while we were in lockdown, my older sister was failing school quite spectacularly. I felt awful about it, she had made an attempt on her life (I think with Ibuprofen? Nothing drastic) and missed months of schools, then had to change school, then there was the lockdown, and I thought Life was being awfully unfair to her, so when she asked for my help with her homework, I put aside my own to help her. She never liked reading, and she had to read a book and write a report in the form of a travel diary written from the protagonist's perspective, which she asked me to do. I love reading; naturally, I had no issue with this. I only asked her with help for my math homework, since I have dyspraxia and we were doing trigonometry and I had a hard time drawing the lines, so I asked if she could do that for me, and I'd just... Tell her what I wanted her to do, which she agreed to— she later used this to blackmail me into redoing her book report all over because the formatting was "wrong", despite the fact I had spent my whole week-end on it, having done literally nothing else but work on her report, eat, drink, and sleep (I didn't even shower, I just wanted to get it done with), threatening to send an e-mail to my math teacher saying she did my homework for me if I didn't. I ended up crying over this so much I threw up, but we did reach a compromise and I changed the formatting (I still failed math that year, and was forced to attend summer classes). The teacher LOVED what I did, praising my sister to no end, even sending an email to my parents (who knew about the ruse) to tell them about how their "daughter" was a prodigy and absolutely HAD to pursue a literary career, because it would be such a waste not to. This made me feel so happy I forgot about how upset working on this made me feel, and I even agreed to help her do a video call with her teacher, during which I sat in a corner of her room with a whiteboard, writing the answers for her. This was so incredibly stressful, but also very silly (I have no idea how the teacher didn't suspect a thing, but hey), and it made me feel like maybe I did have talent after all.
I spent years writing fanfics as training for when I would finally get a creative idea, but all my ideas... Well they kind of suck. I still write them, for fun, but now with the rise of AI, I find myself wondering if I'm even good enough to do this. I have shitty ideas based around my hyperfixations, a maybe OK writing style for an highschooler, and every now and then I still get praise (one of my teacher once told me she was "almost sad" I passed her class because she really liked how I answered questions, saying that my responses were "almost literature") but it feels a bit hollow. I don't think anyone would like my ideas, but I keep getting them, and getting enthused about them, but then I lack motivation because someone could do it better now, without even doing any work... But what no one can copy is my life. So, if I ever get better, I want to write about it, but not as an autobiography, no, rather as a cheesy romance between a ghost and a zombie, where the more the story progresses, the clearer it becomes that they're actually the same person, and it's actually about self-love, and it's a bit cringey when taken at face value, but it's actually a bit deep once you get the knowledge that those were one person, and that it was never actually about romantic love, it's about my journey, and I can finally feel good about being perceived because, no, it's not actually about me silly, it's about a zombie and a ghost it's about me, I deserve love, even from myself.
