I never really believed that middle children were treated any different from others up until a few months ago–in fact, I thought it was just a way for whiny teenagers to angst about their family when they had nothing else to complain about. This may be true, but recently I’ve noticed more and more than I’ve been ignored by my parents while my little brother works to keep it that way.

My parents are divorced, but we always end up moving back in forth between living with both parents and then living with my mother. In the last three years I’ve moved 3 or 4 times, spent quite a few weeks in hotels. It’s been stressful on all of us kids. My older brother got out of it when he left for college, and ever since my little brother has become more and more of a tyrant.

Everywhere I turn he has something to criticize about me. He calls me fat and ugly–at the moment I’m struggling with anorexia and have gotten to such an unhealthy low weight, and still he berates my figure, telling me to exercise and stop eating. He always laughs in my face when I mention college. I’m too stupid to get into college–I should just drop out already, since I’ll probably be pregnant before the year is up. (Even though I haven’t so much as had my first kiss, never mind sex.) I’ve recently done experimentation with makeup and my clothing. He has since started to call me a slut and tells me to stop wearing “whore-paint”. No matter what I do he criticizes me; and whatever I’m good at he brushes it off and says I’ll never get anywhere in life with it. (Those things being writing and drawing) He, at times, even goes so far as to be physically abusive when I don’t give him what he wants leaving scratches and bruises on my arms.

My mother has seen all of this and doesn’t step in. Sure, she yells at him at times, but he just laughs in her face and keeps doing it. I’ve told her that I don’t like what he says and does and that she is being unfair and I end up as the bad guy in the situation for “always bothering her”. I don’t misbehave much; I’m relatively respectful but I’ve lost so much respect for my parents that it’s hard not to snap and yell at them every once in a while. My grades are the only thing my parents can fault me for, where my little brother drinks and parties and curses to his heart’s content. But, since he still somehow manages to get As and Bs, I’m the one who is in the wrong. I can’t even see my friends because I’m selfish when I ask for a ride, but my brother can see his girlfriend and friends whenever he wants–and my somehow my mother always complains that I don’t have a social life and I need to get out of the house and stop being such a loser.

I’m so sick of this. I can’t do anything right even though I try hard to be a good daughter and sister. I don’t have a voice in my house because I’m too tired of being yelled at, so I’m not bothering to stand up for myself anymore. I’m angry and miserable and so inevitably powerless. It feels like I’ll never get out.

– Nina