Sibling Unrivalry

I often find myself writing blog posts in my head and this morning as I woke, I found a subject running around in there, writing itself....

So I guess I need to write it....

I am the youngest of two girls.

My sister is a normal average sort of a person. Quite pretty. She was good with men when she was younger, always getting nice expensive presents from men who loved her to distraction. Not so much like that these days, being a divorcee with two amazing but challenging children, I think she has gotten a little sick of men.

She did fine at school but didn't excel. She was relatively shy and pretty moody so her social circle was smallish. But she always had that charm that she could pull out, somewhat flirtatious. Family friends, and their children always liked her, whereas I made some of them uncomfortable. I was too eager to make friends and well, being the different one is never good as a kid. I learnt to hide my differentness, it was somehow necessary to get on with people in the way I wanted. My sister though, well she bore the brunt of me. I have no idea if it would have been better if I was the older or younger.

You see, the problem between the pair of us was this, in this current age of labeling, I would probably have been put into the gifted and talented category.

I was accidentally put a year when I changed schools. I had lessons with the less able for a while, during breaks but I caught up and overtook most of my peers. Within four years, I was right up at the top, although I never really realised this, I still thought I was a thicko.

No fuss was ever really made of my achievements because of my Sister. My folks wanted to treat us equally, but how can you treat chalk and cheese the same? My achievements never erased my thicko status in my head. I remember getting my GCSE results and asking a class mate what they got. They didn't want to tell me. And honestly, this was the first time it dawned on me that not everyone would get the results I would....

So kind of an odd situation really. I was the kid whose homework got copied, but not the one they wanted to hang out with. My sister was the girl who had a gifted younger sister and the hot boyfriend.

But this was only part of the story. We joined a youth group. Well I did and she followed along. There, away from school and family, I flourished. The group was for 10 -26 year olds and was a country based organisation. I had always done well in the company of those older. I enjoyed adults more than I did kids, even at an early age.

I flourished even more when I went to college to do my A-levels. An all girls Christian school had been wrong for me. No boys. I had way more in common with boys than I did girls when I was younger. In a group of like minded people, I suddenly found I was popular and that boys really liked me. It was heady stuff.

The more I flourished, the harder it was for my family I think. My folks were proud but they couldn't show it too much., not without denting my more fragile sister. She was much better at expressing negative emotions than me, people just assumed I was alright. Slowly I was shriveling though. I got glandular fever at 14 and there was an element of depression within that.

So this kinda sets the scene for a couple of stories.

I studied environmental science and this included an element of biology. Biology was my sisters subject at degree level, not that she did too well really. My Mum called me one time and asked me to play down how well I was doing, particularly with regards to my Biology to give my sister a bit of a boost. I did. It was horrid.... I was finding Biology harder than anything else as I had no Biology background. My sister asked me if I was in danger of failing! I was no where near failing anything.... I walked out with a first class honours degree and was no where near failing any of it.

I also remember when I started art GCSE, something that I was soon forced to drop due to the glandular fever. It was seen as an extra and less important than religious education. I disagree with that decision still and regret it. I was finishing a piece of work and an art teacher was looking at it, one who had not really taught me before, but had taught my sister. He looked at the piece hard and then said that he thought I would be even better than my sister. That sort of comment made me very uncomfortable. I may not have been consciously aware of all the undercurrents within my family regarding my success, but unconsciously, I was very very aware.

They still affect me to this day. I work in a warehouse. My Boss can be difficult and is not a well educated person. I have learnt to dumb down what I know even more working with her. The other day she learnt that South Africa was a country in it's own right.

Is it right that I have to act less clever than I am? Is it right that I have been taught to not value my achievements? Is it right I have learnt to be less than I am?

And I know what sparked this... The art teachers comment. I used to draw a lot, horses. I wasn't bad. I was just starting to get better with things as well. I could have been respectably good at art (not great for all my academic ability, I am a Jack of All Trades, I have yet to find my specific talent, the thing I can do and should be doing). That one comment took art from being an enjoyable activity to something to be good at, better than others, better than my sister.

Being a scientist left no time for art either, so here I am, nearly two decades later, trying to reclaim that other half of myself and all the things that come with it....

Art is linked to passion, passion to anger and this whole side of myself has been lost or taken from me in one form or another. So that is how art was taken from me. I might talk about anger and passion some other time. I had to do a lot of work on anger.

I don't think I am a person entirely at ease with myself. I want to be.