Being the oldest also means bearing a ton of the responsibility. Usually, responsibility you never asked for.
And that's tough. You need to have your 'you' time! But when you grow up as the oldest sibling, sometimes that can be totally difficult to come by.
u/VileZ_ asked:
Oldest Siblings of Reddit, What do you hate about being the oldest sibling?
Here were some of those answers.
The Long, Slow Path
Giphy
We had rules of "when you get to X age you'll get X thing you're allowed to do!" like stay up later, watch worse rated movies, etc. But I was the oldest kid of 3, and the second I was allowed to do anything my little bros were instantly allowed to do it too.
I PAVED THE WAY FOR YOU GUYS.
Subverting Disappointment
My older brother told me his whole life, he hated the fact that whenever he made a mistake he was a big disappointment to our parents, but when the rest of us made the same mistake later, our parents were already pretty much over it.
I just bought a motorcycle and my parents went out of their minds. My brother said he had been waiting a long time for one of us to get a bike first so he didn't have to be the disappointment.
Accepting Responsibility
When things go wrong and your parents aren't able to be there for you, it's usually the oldest sibling that has to step up.
My mom got sick when I was in high school and college. And everything then became my job. I'd go buy the groceries after school, I'd get home early to cook for everyone, I would take my brother out to buy clothes/supplies, I had to do the majority of the cleaning.
It has left me a little bitter. I was 16-17 and trying to raise my sibling because my mom couldn't. I had all the house mom duties and none of the perks.
Leave Me Out Of This
I'm the oldest of 6, and we're all in our 30s and 40s now. But back about 15 years ago when I was in my 20s and my parents were getting divorced, I was the one they both wanted to vent to, because they were too immature to talk rationally to each other. So as the oldest I was stuck with a lot of go-between tasks, which I did not enjoy at all.
Never Vulnerable
The pressure to always be fine. Always be ok. There was very little room for me to ever not be anything but put together and composed. I've had to have my crap together since I was like 8. I learned long ago to not ask for help. Siblings can ask. Hell one can get more financial help from parents as an adult in her 30's then was even possible for me as a college student.
It is what it is...
Twas Not I, Forsooth
Everything was always my fault, always. Even if it wasn't me that did it, it was still somehow my fault. I even moved away to live with my Dad and when my sibling did something bad my Mom would call to yell at me about how it's my fault. If I were more clever and more stupid at the same time I might have responded with something like "so you're telling me I can control my sibling better than you can?"
Being The Leader, Always
That I will never have someone to watch my back or defend me against our parents the way I do for them.
Being their protector is innate when you're the oldest. You feel it naturally or it's drilled into you. I still do it as adults - "quit harassing X over his veganism!" "Hey I heard you had a tough week in med school, are you ok?" Etc. Those instincts don't come naturally to youngest siblings (not that they're assholes but it isn't hardwired into the way they interact with me like it is the other way around). Or they have no empathy for the problems I'm going through because they haven't gone through them yet. I wish I had that.
It's Basically All New Parents
Parents got to make all their parenting mistakes on me. Also parents never had money with 3 kids until after I left the house. Parents also learned that being super ridiculously strict didn't work well either, so my brothers got to do what ever they wanted. Sometimes I think my brothers have a skewed sense of what their parenting was actually like, because they lived quite different childhoods than I did.
Now they act like I was some kind of evil teenager because i rebelled and they don't realize the living hell their childhood would have been if I didn't "break" them with my.. um.. punkness. Ya, if I got to watch The Simpsons, listen to rock music, and be able to leave the house ever without having to check in every 30 minutes like you guys did, maybe I wouldn't have rebelled so hard.
The Blood, Sweat, And Tears Of Siblingdom
I had to fight for every little thing. Staying up late, staying home when sick, getting my first phone (even though I paid), joining social media, going out with friends, having to get a job at 15, and especially what I took in college despite paying every single penny of it myself sans loans.
I love my little brother more than anything but he will never know how hard I had to work for everything I have. When my dad had a mental breakdown and didn't work for almost a decade, I was the one who picked up the slack and took care of us. When we came on better times, he got everything he could ever want. I was happy for him but it's really hard living with so much responsibility and so little love from your family. Maybe I'm just an entitled big sister. I don't know if I deserve to feel this way.
Suddenly, Mom Part Two
Giphy
I'm much older than my siblings, like more than a decade older, so what happened was that when my siblings where born I was basically forgotten until I was needed for babysitting. If I wanted to do something in high school and I had to stay after school I couldn't because I had to babysit. If I wanted to go out somewhere I basically had to make an appointment with my mother so she could check if I didn't have to babysit. I felt more like an employee, this lasted until they got into middle school. I have a child of my own now and I can't believe just how equal it was to taking care of my siblings, I was basically their second mother.
Curious to hear about some of the more creepy indiscretions people get away with, Redditor Flytechofficial asked:
"What is perfectly legal, but creepy as hell?"
These things that happen in public restrooms can be considered criminal.
Respecting Splash Zones
"Using the urinal next to me when there were plenty of other choices."
Nightmare For The Pee-Shy
"hanging out in a public bathroom timing how long people pee."
Bad Timing
"I swear to God. I did a lot of work in hospitals for a while, big f'king hospitals with tons of bathrooms all over the place. For some God damned reason, regardless of what time or bathroom I selected to take a sh*t in not 30 seconds after I sat down a janitor would knock on the door to clean the bathroom. It's not as if it was one janitor, just some random janitor would inevitably need to clean whatever bathroom I was in as soon as I got comfy. It's like I was being stalked by the janitors."
"So now I'm trying to take a sh*t knowing full well there's somebody out there actively timing how long it takes."
Looky-Loo
"I was drunk in a casino and went to use the washroom. The floors in there were a polished marble or something. Sitting on the toilet, pants down, my stall neighbour made eye contact with me on the reflective floor tile."
The following examples involving minors have no legal repercussions.
Outside Watchers
"Technically, you can stand on the sidewalk and stare into someone's house through a window. It's not illegal as long as you stay off of their property, but it's really freaking creepy."
Keeping Tabs On Someone's Age
"A national newspaper having a countdown for when a child actress becomes 'legal' for sex."
"Answers to questions that will surely come. ....Yes. The Sun (UK). Emma Watson."
– pdirth
The Young Subjects
"When I was a child, we had a creepy horrible neighbor that would harass my family constantly. One of the things he did was stand at the corner of his yard and videotape me playing in a pool with my friends (we were around 8). My parents called the police but were told that it's legal if he's on his property."
These perfectly harmless examples can give you goosebumps.
Macabre
"Hanging your doll collection from the trees in your yard using string made from human hair."
People's Taste
"I believe the act of cannibalism itself is legal so long as you didn't murder anyone to do it. If your homie gives you his arm to gnaw on, it's fair game."
I recently treated myself by going to a movie theater after what seemed like a long hiatus for much of the year.
Streaming blockbuster movies from home, while convenient, has never made as much of an impact when compared to the moviegoing experience.
But after my recent trip to our local AMC, I'm beginning to think watching entertainment from the comfort of my quiet home is a much better option.
I forgot that a good majority of audience members are disrespectful and pretty much ignore all the rules—including no texting or talking during the movie.
The normal volume conversations and the number of lit screens from people's smartphone's in my peripheral vision throughout the movie were huge distractions.
Maybe as I'm getting older, my patience has worn thin, or I happened to have a particularly unpleasant experience. But seriously, how can anyone enjoy going to the movies when people are constantly updating their status inside a darkened auditorium?
It should illegal. Rant over.
I feel like if there is nothing after life, it just invalidates life. But maybe I'm just dramatic. I hope there is peace. Thoughts?
black and white two funerals GIFTogether...
"When we die, the whole world as seen by us, dies together with us."
"Yes it does. As does the entire universe. Only when we are alive can we experience the passage of time. The instant we die the entire universe will experience heat death and cease to be. It my take a million eons but since we can no longer experience time it will be relatively instantaneous."
- OkEbb749
Thanks Alan
"It's one of the great wonders of life: What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, that it will pose the next question to you: What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can't have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum. ~Alan Watts"
So Romantic...
"When I was much younger, I had a dream where I died. Not a typical dream, not a romanticized dream. It was a dream where I was an archer in a medieval battle. About 5 minutes into the battle, chaos was all around me, and I watched an opposing archer aim and loose an arrow straight into my left eye."
"I remember the sensation of impact, ringing in my ears, and falling to the ground. I remember the warmth of the blood on my face. The feeling of life leaving my body, and the sense of worry evaporating into warmth and peace as the world left behind me."
"I remember waking up shortly after thinking that the feeling and reality of that experience was so vivid and so detailed that it must have been an experience from a previous incarnation hundreds of years ago. From that moment on, I've never feared the actual process of death. I feel like I've experienced it many times before."
Erase
Computer Reaction GIFGiphy"I think one of your best friends delete's your browsing history."
"Take the hard drive out of my computer at home… Put it in the bath… And make sure it's completely wiped. -Tensai Slime"
If you love me... rule number one... HIDE THE EVIDENCE!!! Let that be heard far and wide. And dreams, always so intertwined aren't they?
Before & After
Happy Baby GIFGiphy"Exactly the same as before you were born."
- whumoon
"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. -Mark Twain"
Moving On...
"We clean the bed and assign it to another patient."
"The REAL reason why nurses are so dark. 90 year old man in hospice got hit by a car on his way to get fitted for his funeral tuxedo, and didn't have a DNR. Kept him alive for four hours, and now it's time to document everything that was done to save his life because there will inevitably be a lawsuit from a family member who has had four years to say goodbye but somehow didn't get to."
Again...
"Play again?
Yes
[No]
I don't know what they mean or how to utilize them. I'm a Buddhist (but a gamer first and foremost) so it's cool you guys made those connections This totally makes up for r/movies continuously banning me."
Oblivion...
"I've answered this one before but here it is again. Either two things happen after you die: you either go somewhere or it's oblivion. If it is oblivion, then we're just going back to the same place before we were born and there's nothing wrong with that. We were there for billions or trillions of years, possibly infinity."
"You lose that concept of time since your brain doesn't work anymore so you don't even know it's over. It's not nothing because nothing would be something and that means that you are aware, which you can not be if you're dead. If we do go somewhere, then that's something no one understands because no one has ever come back to tell us."
"Those stories of people coming back after they "died" and "saw stuff" weren't really dead. Their hearts stopped but their brains were still working. If the Universe continues to recycle itself infinitely, then there's a chance we will be reborn or continuously reborn but have no memory of our previous selves."
- jamoh20
On Holiday
"When I was a kid I drowned while on holiday with my family, a giant fat man jumped in the pool on top of me and no one noticed till I was on the bottom of the pool. I remember the feeling of my lungs being on fire, then shivering then as everything was going dark a strange sense of peace and I was ok with it, No panic or terror then it went black."
"I was resuscitated at the side of the pool a few minutes later. I remember nothing from the black to being "alive" again. I was around 7 when it happened and since then I've been strangely at peace with the fact that one day I will die and slip into the dark void of nothingness. Hope that helps."
Popcorn?
500 days of summer cinema GIFGiphy"You wake up in a chair in a cinema and learn that the other are past lives of you and you're about to watch your next life very soon on the big screen."
The truth is none of us know the truth. We live everyday with the afterlife being a gamble. And that seems like it's going to have to be enough.
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