I don't even know how to explain my family situation without making it sound dramatic, but I think I need to get this out somewhere.
I come from a very strict family. Since I was a girl, there were always restrictions on where I could go, what I could do, and how I interacted with the world. I wasn't really allowed to experience life the way other teenagers did.
My parents had an arranged marriage. My mother had a government job and my father was a mechanic. Their relationship was difficult. My father was very controlling and often didn't treat my mother kindly.
Before my brother was born, my mother had a miscarriage. She was already a very emotional person, and after losing that baby, she struggled to move on.
Then my brother was born.
She became extremely protective of him. She wouldn't let him go outside much. Whenever my father told him to do something, she would sometimes stop him. He became the child everyone worried about.
Then I was born.
I was the "good child." I never gave my parents reasons to worry. I didn't do things they would be ashamed of. I tried to help my mother and keep peace between my parents. I learned very early to be responsible and not create problems.
But when I became an adult, things became much worse.
My mother's brother borrowed money from her and other relatives for a school he was building. My mother had no other option at the time. When my father found out, everything exploded.
When I was in 12th grade, my father even tried to hang himself. I was studying for an exam while all of this was happening. He eventually stopped, but when I tried to talk to him, he screamed at me.
After that, he started posting things on Facebook about how my mother had betrayed him. My mother eventually ran away from the house because of everything that was happening. A relative found her before anything happened to her.
The environment at home became unbearable.
My father stopped talking to me for around six months. He didn't ask where I was going to college. He didn't ask what college I was attending. He never came to drop me at my hostel.
I was struggling badly with anxiety during my first year. It became so severe that I would physically get sick.
Because of health issues, I had to stay with my cousins for some time, and they were very mean and rude to me. Eventually I moved into a PG with my school friends, and things started getting a little better.
I still struggle with anxiety, though. Sometimes I become so overwhelmed that I can't even speak.
And then there is my brother.
He is older than me. He struggled academically, took longer than expected to finish his engineering degree, and has now been unemployed for around two years.
My mother still supports him.
He knows that she will be there for him even if he doesn't work. He knows exactly how to use her soft spot for him. And what hurts me isn't even that she supports him.
It's that sometimes she doesn't trust me the way she trusts him.
Once, a classmate messaged me on Snapchat to wish me happy birthday. My brother saw it and told my mother. He basically said that if I didn't have anything to hide, I should show her my phone.
I actually had nothing to hide.
But I was hurt that my mother believed him so easily.
She knows me. She knows what kind of person I am. She knows everything I've sacrificed and how careful I've always been.
Yet somehow, if my brother says something about me, she believes him first.
And I have to beg my brother for help with even small things, like filling out an exam form. Yet whenever the family needs advice or help, they come to me.
I feel like I'm useful when someone needs something from me, but invisible when I need someone.
There is another thing that hurts me deeply.
My mother once told me that she doesn't want me to get a job before my brother because he is older and "he won't feel good."
That sentence broke something inside me.
I have spent my entire life trying to be the responsible daughter. I am trying to build my career. I am trying to become independent.
And somehow, I'm supposed to hold myself back so that my brother doesn't feel bad?
I know my mother loves me. I genuinely believe she does.
But I also feel that she has a different kind of love for my brother. Maybe because of the miscarriage. Maybe because she became overprotective of him. Maybe because of everything that happened in our family.
I don't know.
Sometimes I even think, What if she had never had that miscarriage and I had never been born?
I hate that I think this way, because I love my mother. But sometimes I wonder whether my entire life would have been different if I had been the child she had been waiting for.
I've never had a relationship. No love marriage is really allowed in my family. Even the idea of trusting someone scares me.
I've watched my father blame my mother and I've watched my mother stay despite everything. I've seen what happens when someone becomes emotionally dependent on another person.
So now I'm terrified of trusting anyone.
Sometimes I think, If my own family couldn't make me feel completely safe, why would some random man ever love me enough to stay?
People often say that girls who grow up in dysfunctional families look for love outside the family.
I didn't.
I became too scared to even start.
I feel like I missed out on so many normal experiences because I was afraid of what could happen.
I don't think my family is completely loveless. That's what makes this so confusing.
I know they love me.
But sometimes love doesn't feel like enough when you constantly feel like you're the second choice.
I don't want to hate my brother. I don't want my mother to stop loving him.
I just want to feel like I matter too.
I want someone in my family to choose me without me having to earn it by being useful, obedient, or "the good daughter."
I'm in my 20s now, and I don't know how to stop carrying all of this.
If you grew up in a family like this, how did you learn to stop feeling like you were less important?
And how do you learn to trust people when your childhood taught you that depending on someone can hurt you?
