Lovers and the Loved

Her life started great, it was simple and grand!  It was full of love, and overwhelmed with happiness.  Sure it had a few snags here and there, but that was normal.  Then HE came, yes the he we all know.  The one we fear most as young children, the new sibling, the younger brother!  He was perfect, small, helpless, she simply adored him.  Other children told her to be afraid, they told her to take charge.  But she didn’t see why, he was her baby brother.  Though after a few months it was all clear, she felt less, she felt unworthy, and like she wasn’t enough.  She tried harder and harder to push her efforts, never linking past with present.  The eldest brother with problems and flaws, the youngest uncapable, still an infant, and not yet on his own.  She, she was young, getting good grades, behaving, and helping out at EVERY possible opening.  Parents were always worried about “positive reinforcement” for the eldest, and the youngest was still flawless.  Leaving her, not the eldest nor the youngest, but somewhere squeezed in the middle.  Not a boy, just a girl, and different in EVERY way.  What purpose, what reasoning did she have for special attention?  The answer to this question, none.  She was practically flawless, but that was left unrewarded.  She pushed towards college, she pressed towards school, she settled on a career, and excelled in practically everything.  Never did she realize the purpose of this ambition, never did she notice the more attention “they” got, the harder, and farther she pushed.  Until one day it hit her, the reason she felt alone, the reason she never thought herself enough, was always because of “them!”  Not “them” the siblings, but “them” the parents.  The creators of life, the bringers of faith.  Even after then, she never felt accepted, she never felt enough, or like she was anything.  She found out the reason she pushed, she was the answers to her questions.  That deep inside her heart, she thrived to get that “special attention” by her parents, she thrived to be accepted, truly by the ones she held closest.  But she knew, she saw what it was, and why she felt such pain, and sorrow.