It is not like we grow up asking to be the singular most important individual our guardians choose to revolve around.

It’s not by random happenstance, or impeccable planning, that we are reared the way we are.

We are not these anomalies to be studied meticulously from high pedestals of judgment, and mocked with vehemence, with a hurtful consistency.

Since I was young I’ve been told by people who don’t know me, that I am spoiled. I’e been spoken to about being coddled by people who deign to think they know my life. Even those gifted with the blessing of being in the know, using deflecting humor, sound jealous in their intent to ridicule every aspect of my life and rearing as symptomatic of an indulgent parent.

The assumptions people usually have is that we exit the womb riding on a unicorns back with a cool and calm bad-assery. Apparently we are wiped down with the baby Jesus’s manger blankets before being sent through to our parents on a sun-beam….even if you’re born at night, the darkness takes the time for a coffee break.

Anyway, the world generally believes that we proceed to grow up pooping rainbows into gold-flecked diapers, and then move from puree to solid food with the seductive cooking techniques of a gourmet chef. Upon graduating to grand prepubescence, we begin actually walking on the floor, having spent the beginning stages of adolescence crawling on clouds.

Hormones are a non-issue as we usher pubescence with a sophisticated calm, our parents having taken the time to call up Mother nature to save everyone the perils that surely come with such plebeian realities. Having spent a childhood playing, not with expensive porcelain dolls, but rather human recreations of toys bought to move at our every whim, we enter primary and high school with designer apparel and haughty stature.

When tallying up, up to this point: one has either had a life of envy from their perceived peers and underlings, or utter bullying and ridicule,such as I’ve experienced. People actually believe the way your parent buys you clothing, feeds, and cares for you is all an elaborate ploy to irritate them. So people spend hours turning their heads and whispering to those beside them: “Does she think she’s better than us?”. From crowded school hallways, to sports field the mass consciousness grows until words and phrases like ‘baby’, ‘only-child syndrome’, ‘spoiled brat’, ‘label whore’, ‘coconut’ etc. saturate themselves into your mentality and you spend the next 5 years attempting to run away from them, make attempts to embrace them, desperately try to cling to indifference in the face of them, settle for justifying others cruelty as necessary for others grip on reality, and then land up here: a place where you write a blog post meditating on human logic, and if others have such power over the identity you were meant to mold yourself etc.

Incredible how we spend our lives listening to the television shows, teachers, parents, lovers, friends who tell you to “be who you want to be” , and yet, when tracing your childhood, you find that every encounter has guided this identity into what it is. Its as if every judgement lead to 2 paths: one where you could not listen and go about your life, or another where you pay the words mind, and your reaction, even if it rebels, is a causality of the statements.

URGH! I’m confused, and tired, and utterly pissed.

I’ve been told I don’t share well because I’ve never had siblings. I’ve been told I’m spoiled because my mother chose to not have any children and could therefore take the time to shower me with love and attention. I’ve been told my life and my attentions have been bought and defined by material items that I have had, and just because some with siblings lack them, that it makes me doubly spoiled and unique. I’ve been told because of how I speak to my mother, because I have such a close relationship with her and that we possess our own mannerisms of communication, that it somehow means I am a baby in context.

I have been told all this.

…And what I know is what I have lived, and what I have lived is a life charmed uniquely for me.

I don’t want to have to explain myself, why I do what I do, and why I have what another does not.

I should not have to be made to feel guilty for the blessings I may have. People shouldn’t go about deducing what they have no business in attempting to understand.

Only-children are different from everyone else-it’s the  nature of humanity to be individualized so. However,so are those with siblings different.

Are you not spoiled for having 2-7 siblings by comparison?

Are you not spoiled for having messy breakfasts every week, and crowded houses where there is always someone to run to?

Are you not spoiled as a not-only-child?

I beg you to think of yourself as much more blessed, before judging us as the only child.