Sunday, March 3, 2013

Looming Shadows

I'll be taking the SAT for the first time this March.  Well.  Technically it's the first time, if you don't count my blundering in 7th grade for the Duke TIP program.  Which reminds me, my brother will be stumbling through that next year.  Except in his case, I suppose it won't be a stumble.  My mom has been preparing his math for ages after all.  I'm a bit envious that his life has been so perfectly mapped out as a result of my multiple failures and few successes.  But then again he is my brother and I do want the best for him.  Though it would be nice to be genuinely praised for once.  I used to be the center of my mom's attention, and while I can share, I'm not sure what to make of having all of my previous accomplishments, if that's what they can be called, swallowed up by the brilliance of my baby brother.  A baby brother that's already almost as tall as me.  Great.

I'm sounding really horrendous right now, but I can't seem to care.  Cause I really do enjoy playing with my brother, but sometimes I just can't stand to hear others constantly showering him with praise.  I've been used to being admired all my life, and so suddenly losing it all (or maybe it was a gradual occurrence, that's actually more likely, and I just noticed it now), has rather shaken my world.  I feel dreadfully sorry for myself, but usually it's guilt and self-reproach.

My greatest fear has always been that I'll be left as an unnecessary sidepiece, to be brushed off eventually.  That's probably why I keep shoving the people who care about my away.  It would be much too easy for them to tear my soul if I keep them close.  This applies even to my mother.  I'm terrified of failing her expectations, and yet the one way that my logical eight-year old self decided to prevent this was by lowering all of her expectations of me to a level that I could pretend to excel at.  That's probably also the reason that I'm afraid to try new things, to move on.  With every new development, I'm scared that my lack of skill, lack of tact, lack of value, will shine through and show everyone that they've been fooled by my commonplace self.