Unfortunately I am a middle child.

I have always felt left out in things and would stay away from my family. I felt like the ‘black sheep’ in a white sheep herd, so I stayed away from them.

I was always the ‘weird’ one, the ‘crazy’ one, the ‘scary’ one, because I believed in things out of this world. My parents would laugh at me for being curious of fashion styles and talking about ‘weird’ topics such as Aliens and Stonehenge [sci-fi fan girl] and they would criticize me, but it would be my relatives that would understand me because most of them were a middle child.

My older brother would be brought to things without a complaint because he would be the ‘over-achiever’ and win awards and such, except my parents never came to my Award ceremonies. They Didn’t even come to my 6 grade graduation, and I would be lucky if my dad came and sat for one of my chorus concerts but he would just drop me off and pick me up later.

I have 2 younger siblings that are attached to my parents very much that I barely have time alone to speak to them. I ended up having very low self-esteem that only got worse when I started getting acne in elementary, I would start to be distant to many people in elementary and more tolerant of multiple people.

I got made fun of by the popular girls because I wasn’t a ‘stick’ figure like them or blonde, and didn’t have a very good boyfriend then. And then I only had him as a choice because no other guy would go out with me.

So to over-view things; I was a distant, weird, shy, smart, mysterious kid with too many personalities.

I am now living a very different life, not much had changed though except my impossible amount of tolerance of people’s attitude, and my self-image. I’m working on becoming more intelligent and confident as we know it on my own… Gradually… with help from another middle child friend…

– Julia