I don't even know

The premise is that the eldest sibling gets the most pressure. He/she has to set the right examples to the other siblings, be a good role model and everything else that requires to be the "perfect child". But what happens if he/she "screw up", in the eyes of his/her parents? Hypothetically speaking, the parents would now look to the other child and subconsciously instill pressure to be what the elder sibling wasn't. Hypothetically speaking.

So that premise flies out the window. It is the youngest that is faced with high expectations. And I happen to be the last out of three kids.

Fortunately, till this day, I have never really received the downside of being the youngest. Especially thirteen years younger. It's always been easy: I get called 'cute' most of the time, I never got into fights with my siblings and of course, I get all the attention in terms of being spoilt. Now I get plentiful of attention, but more of a... 'closely-monitored' attention.

See, my siblings and I don't live under the same roof. We're actually thousands of miles apart. So I consider myself an only child sometimes. Everything was ok (as listed above) just until recently. Maybe it's been happening way before I noticed it but now that I'm pretty much idle on most days, I'm starting to realise this icky thing called pressure sneaking in. And it's not even the good type.

My siblings' behaviour recently is also a catalyst to the crawling of the poison. Without having to explain the details (or else I'll be here for days typing it out), long story short: my parents are heavily disappointed. So disappointed to the point where I can feel the drag in the room. Their disappointment lightens up as they realise that they have one daughter left that could possibly make up for what their two other children did, or didn't do. Eighteen years of having it easy finally caught up to me.

From academic choices to boyfriends to something as little as reading the right books are being scrutinized. I appreciate the concern from both of my parents and I understand wholly where they're coming from. They feel that they've messed up somewhere along the way in raising my elder siblings and so they only want the best for me. But they shouldn't have to live through the regret of every parental choice they had to make with them.

I don't blame my parents, I really don't.