I find that as a last born, most times I’m never good enough and I don’t know if it’s a plight with most last borns in an African home with older siblings or it’s unique to me. I hope it’s the former because misery loves company.
They’ll tell you it’s from a place of love but sometimes being the last born with older siblings feels more like a curse than a blessing. Why? When you have siblings that are a lot older than you, your choices are often perceived like you don’t know what you’re doing. It feels like you’re ganged up against. Your actions are scrutinised because they know better than you. Worse is, when there’s a generational gap because everything stems from “I don’t know how your generation thinks”. Everyone seems to know better than you, wants to make choices for you or point out your flaws to you. I often wonder if my inability to get along so well with my older siblings is because I didn’t grow up in the same house with them, considering I left the house at 3 and didn’t come back till I was a fully grown adult. Would I have found it easier to get along with them and not feel like the third wheel, if we had grown up together? But how would that have changed anything if at every developmental stage, they were at boarding school or university. Sometimes I wonder if age gaps really do play a role in how siblings get along but I’ve been around long enough to see that no two cases are ever really the same so I’m left wondering.
Are there perks to being a last born? Sometimes, but if I had to come back in another life, I’d rather come back as a middle child.
