The Emotional Support Sibling Essay Example

I am the emotional support sibling. The “glad I don’t have to worry about you” daughter. I have always been the strong, mature one in my family. I never cry during movies; instead, I bring the tissue box for everyone else to pass around. My emotional control is the armor protecting all the vulnerable parts of me I deny exist. I have put up the tough act in front of others for years; so as far as anyone knows, I do not break.

Which means that this situation is not real. It could not have happened. Not to me, not there, not then, not ever. And especially not in front of all those people. But it happened. It is part of my reality, and I need to understand how I got there. How did that happen?

Did it start with those two girls screaming in my face? No, I handle conflict pretty well. Like that time a visit from my aunts turned into an unwarranted intervention. All the crying and yelling was background noise as I held onto my mom, wiping her tears and pressing my head onto her chest. As if the continual pounding of her heart somehow kept the walls from caving in.

Was it the issue with my teacher? She hated me, I’m sure of it. Either way, I dealt with it when she accused me of using my grandmother’s death as a vacation trip to Mexico. I got zeros with no remediation because “funerals don’t last two weeks.” Somehow it was my fault that I left the country at 3 AM without collecting schoolwork first. Because that should have been my priority. The endless calls from my mom explaining the cultural traditions we took part in fell on deaf ears. But that injustice had passed. I got over it, right?

Well, maybe it started with the incident that took place a few months beforehand. When the dark cloud slowly engulfing my dad threatened to take him away for good. The doctors call it depression, but I call it poison. Because only poison could weaken the man I knew my whole life as a figure of strength, stability, and protection. 

Only poison could bring that man to his knees, crying to some higher power for any kind of release. At that moment, I cursed the universe for my futile 8-year-old body. If only I was big enough to cradle him in my arms, then maybe he would believe us when we say “you’re loved, needed, and cared for.” If I was strong enough, maybe I could carry my family on my shoulders and walk this trail of broken glass we call life for them.

That was the day the word suicide wedged its way into the back of my head. When the fear of it one day becoming a reality in my family kept me awake at night. Call me a martyr, but after that, I vowed to do anything I could to prevent that nightmare from coming to life. 

Suddenly the news of all my petty 5th-grade drama stopped making its way to the kitchen table. I learned to bite my tongue and keep all of the anger bubbling inside of me at bay. My family did not have the time or energy to deal with a bratty 8-year-old. So I took my role as the youngest child and made it my mission to make sure everyone else smiled or laughed that day. To be their source of happiness and motivation, just to keep them going for at least one more day.

This meant pretending I believed in Santa until my mom finally broke the news when I was 12. It meant dancing around to music when all I wanted to do was hide under my covers and sleep the days away. And most importantly, it meant ignoring all of the dark and twisted feelings I felt lurking deep inside of me. As if I had inhaled that dark cloud looming above us and kept it under lock and key in some abandoned corner of my soul. I mastered the art of silencing words of bitter resentment and regret before they escaped my lips.

And yet, despite the months it took to turn my emotions into cold, immovable walls of stone, I became nothing but a blubbering mess of tears. That day, stranded in the middle of the cafeteria, drowning in a sea of my 5th-grade peers, my shaking body tried to fold in on itself, desperate to disappear from the world. 

“You know no one likes you right? You act like you’re so cool with your perfect friends living your perfect life. Guess what, the world doesn’t revolve around you! We hate you.”

My perfect life. That’s what people thought about me. Yet, in my “free time,” I coaxed my dad out of bed and tried to convince him to eat, thinking “maybe today he’ll keep the food down and stop looking so skinny.” I would mentally prepare myself for the possibility that he might not be breathing when I opened the door. I did not have the luxury of going outside to play with my friends or of joining clubs just to get out of the house. Sounds perfect, right?

And just like that, everything I had trapped inside of me erupted into uncontrollable waves of grief and rage. Sticks and stones are nothing compared to this. Of being controlled by your anger and panic no matter what you do to try and rationalize it. I was grieving the loss of a childhood everyone around me was visibly enjoying. I was livid about the unfairness of it all because I could not think of a single moment in my life that justified any of this.

That day, in the middle of the Leggee cafeteria, I had my first panic attack. This single event sparked a catalyst in my life; creating a vicious cycle of bottling everything up until eventually I overflowed into fits of panic, anger, and sadness.

Well, there it is. The truth I desperately try to ignore. The reason this all happened. It is not my job to take the pain of my family and keep it hidden away from them. I can not fix every obstacle life throws at us. I need them just as much as they need me, if not more. I can not do this alone. So, I am quitting my job as “the emotional support sibling.” Effective immediately.