"you always do it better"

I have been a copycat since the age of three.

“Are you the middle child?”

Someone looked down at me recently with pity, tilting their head just-so with a faint but sympathetic smile playing across their face. Their eyebrows were knitted; their lips pulled thin. The silence between us stretched, a consideration held firmly and yet not with contempt.

I could’ve said yes, a little white lie to express my sorrow at being forgotten, but like any normal human-being, I replied truthfully—“No,” I said, laughing like their supposition was some kind of comedy, “I’m the youngest, actually.”

“The youngest!” they exclaimed. “Well I’ll be—! You must be the favorite.” Their smile was wider now, glowing. I could see in their eyes, glittering like little stars, that this knowledge came with relief—that this was, in fact, a rare occasion.

That my parents did, in fact, not forget me often.

And—

That was the truth.

I was the youngest.

I was not forgotten often.

But when I was,

It felt like a tidal wave crashing over me.

Because this—

This is what it felt like.

To be alone. To possess some covert knowledge that you were not forgotten per sé, and rather sitting in the background until someone in your family decided you were worthy again and ask:

“Hey, have you seen ______?”

And all heads would turn towards the inquiry with scrunched-up brows and collectively say, “Huh.”

Because they hadn’t seen you.

And, in some semblance, that made you free.

---

My brother got mad at me today for applying to a program at our local college.

When I was struggling to figure logistics out—like paying for the course and finding the last prerequisites—he got really red in the face, and like a ticking time bomb, he blew up at me. At everything.

“Why must you always do what I do?”

“I don’t—” I instinctively replied. Though, in retrospect, he had a point.

“You do!” he spat venomously. “You always do!”

Inside, I flinched. My brain was trying to wrap his reaction around in my head, to categorize it into something that made sense. Because, at the time, I could not see why me applying for the program was such a bad idea. I just wanted to complete the training so that I could make some money in a year or so. What was so abysmal about that?

You copy me

With everything.

It doesn’t matter what it is.

But you do it better.

You always do it better.

His vitriol here had reached its peak, finally taking shape into something that I knew regrettably well. Something so familiar that it made my stomach churn. Something that I kept swept under the ‘thought-rug’ for as long as possible—until it inevitably came out again.

And,

Every few months—

It did.

And,

Gee—

Did it sting.

---

As the youngest child, I have always had role models.

My parents. My brother. My extended family (yes, I am the youngest there, too).

There was always someone to look up to. Always someone who had done it first.

My brother, sure, had it with my parents. He knew what they did and accumulated some general advice from them.

But he didn’t have me to precede him.

I, on the other hand, have always had someone older than me—in the same generation—to show me the do’s and do-not’s of life and growing up.

I have been a copycat since the age of three.

Or rather, in my brother’s eyes I have been.

To me, it has always been inspiration.

I love my brother and all that he does.

We bicker often, but when it comes down to it, my brother is a pretty cool person—and I will not tolerate anyone’s disregards towards him but mine.

Because mine, after all, are light-hearted and sensible.

Any others are ridiculous, and whoever said them should respectfully get lost.

To my brother, if you ever find this: sorry for using you in a Substack article. I love you very much—please don’t be too mad at me :)

---

Because I have been a copycat, I have learned a thing or two from those older than me. I have done what I can to get ahead.

In fact, exposure to algebra in the second grade helped me to know the basics already by the sixth. That is how it’s always been for me. Regrettably so.

This also means, when I finally get to things I learned earlier, I want to do them doubly good.

Because, in my eyes, I can never make my brother proud. Nor my parents.

After all, I was the second. I will always be the second. I will repeat the same things as my brother—even if I don’t intentionally choose to do so. I will still have to take the same classes as him. I will still have to face similar challenges in life—canon events, as the media calls it.

This is why I must excel in them. After all, they have already been done. Now, I need to do them better. I have to, for what good am I ‘average’?

Selfish as it is, I am kept awake by the suffocating pressure to be perfect. To achieve the greatest possible score in everything I do.

From the outside, I might look like the poster child—the one with outstanding athletic achievements, overarching academics, and a steadfast smiling face. On the inside, I’m screaming.

I forget to take care of myself.

---

This last week of exams has really shown me the toll of my perfectionistic habits.

I have pushed my body to the brink. I have taken two unintentional naps this past week that lasted more than three hours. By the time I woke up, it was dark outside—evening wasted away.

I should have been studying, I immediately thought to myself both times it happened. Or, at least—exercising. Doing something better with my time—not sleeping.

Reflecting on this train of thought, I began to wonder later:

Why do I think like this?

Is there an ulterior cause rather than stress, lack of time, or worse, ego?

Turns out, yes. It’s a component of my personality—my dire need to excel. Engraved in stone from the moment I was born, being second has defined me my whole life.

Because am I really first if it took me a role model to get me here in the first place?

---

So,

Back to being the middle child and the cliché ‘forgotten’ trope.

The one you left in the mall and only realize until after you’re in the parking lot that you ditched them in TJ-Maxx while shopping for one of the others.

DISCLAIMER: I know this doesn’t apply to all middle children. I am referencing it for stereotypical sake, as well as to allude to my personal experience at the beginning of this article.

Sometimes I think about how I was almost the middle child.

Sometimes I wonder if that would change how I am today.

I think it could have—some. Not much, but some. Enough.

I think it would have given me room to breathe. Because if there was less attention on me, I might have found more space for myself to branch out. With less intense of a focus on all of the things I loved when I was a kid, perhaps I would be more of a well-rounded, average individual and not “exemplary” in all of the things I chose to copy my brother on.

I don’t know—it’s just a thought.

Because I think we all want the things we don’t have.

And in my mind, I think there is value to being forgotten. In fact, there is value in so many things we neglect to see worth in, and I’m starting to realize that applies to more realities than I initially thought. There’s something oddly paradoxical to that—

Perhaps we are all only looking at one page of the story.

And perhaps that’s something we all need to do better at:

Learning more about another human being before making assumptions.

Because if we’re assuming someone has ill intentions merely due to a small outburst in the middle of the day, then we are making a fundamental attribution error.

And since I love examples: Gatsby isn’t just staring out at a green light. It’s probably his entire life story wrapped into one sentence. Just ask an English professor.

So—

A sentence can be a story, but there can also be more to a story than a sentence.

Thank you, and until next time,

Cali