What’s the most entitled thing you’ve ever seen someone do?

The Golden Child and the Ugly Duckling

Kids raised as golden children never turn out to be as pure as their parents see them growing up, unlike real gold. My sister always got her way no matter how nasty or irrational she acted towards me. She got away with it all the time, and that’s because she was the golden miracle child.

What aided this most likely was also that my sister was stunningly beautiful. She had thick curly hair and light eyes. My mom spent a lifetime comparing our looks.

I have dark eyes and straight hair, and I was never as pretty as my sister. My mom loved making comments comparing us after we both became teenagers.

She was constantly telling me to try and dress like my sister and asking her to teach me makeup. But my sister would also bully me and make fun of me if I ever asked her for help making myself prettier.

That’s how we grew up to be extremely resentful of each other. I think my sister just latched on to the worst traits that we saw in my mother while I rejected them all.

I think being put on a pedestal her whole life by my mom for simply being beautiful turned her into a rotten person who doesn’t care about anyone but herself. She thinks she can get away with anything just because of her looks.

The way my mom compared us and put me down led to me having a lot of self-esteem issues. As an adult, I am very quiet and reserved, and some people describe me as a pushover.

Recently, I have been going to therapy to try to grow a stronger spine, even though it has been hard trying to stand up for myself in my relationships for the very first time. I feel like the way my family treated me really screwed me up as an adult, and it’s hard for me to maintain any healthy friendships or romantic relationships.

My sister even slept with my boyfriend in high school in senior year and for no real reason. She never liked him and told me many times she thought he was ugly.

When they found out what had happened, my parents told me to let bygones be bygones. My sister wasn’t even given out to, and that was a moment where I truly realized just how much they preferred her over me.

The way that my dad just stood by and watched my mom emotionally get under my skin for my entire life made me feel like no man would ever stand up for me or see worth in me. It’s very hard for me to trust and connect when dating.

But my entire life hasn’t been completely awful because of my mom and sister. The one upside of being the ugly sister growing up meant that I had zero social life and spent all my time studying.

I ended up graduating high school with a 4.0 and landed myself a full ride at my number one choice for University, which was great. My mom told me the night before I started high school that she was paying for my sister’s college since she was the eldest.

She said I would have to go to community and pay my way through it on my own. I remember sobbing and asking her why she didn’t love me like she loved my sister. She insisted that she did, but my sister deserved it more since she was her firstborn.

The day I had landed my scholarship, I spent the entire day so excited to tell my parents about it. I guess part of me was kind of happy to have something that my sister didn’t.

My sister had spent all her time in high school partying and earning poor grades without any flak from my parents. She was only going to college because my parents could pay for it.

She wasn’t even going to a very good one because her grades are so crap. So the day I rushed home to tell my family that I had gotten a full ride to a prestigious university, I had never been so excited to share good news with my family.

But when I got home and told my parents about my scholarship, all my dad said was, “good job”. My mom didn’t even look up from her phone or give me any response. Then she ignored me for the entire week after I had shared that news.

I tried to ask her why she was mad at me for getting a scholarship for college. She literally just avoided making eye contact with me and walked into the other room.

It was like she literally hated me for earning my scholarship when most parents would be excited. Whatever, that’s when I started to understand just how alone I was and how isolated my family wanted me to feel.

I didn’t understand why either. Why had my mom even had me just to spend a lifetime hating me and in turn making me hate myself?

The day I got my scholarship turned into one of the worst days of my life as I cried myself to sleep and accepted that I would never have a family that loved me, not like my sister did. I despised her for it.

That night, I wrote in my journal until the sun rose about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was tired of being this sad little girl.

I decided I was going to transform every ounce of rage I had into academic success instead of throwing myself a pity party and begging my parents for love and attention. I was going to redirect all my focus and energy to my studies, as I always had, and give myself something they never could.

I was going to be stable, independent, intelligent, and educated, even though I might never be loved. So that’s exactly what I did.

I went to school and graduated with honors. I got a fantastic position in a company I interned for right out of college, and I’ve been making six figures since I turned 23.

When I came home for the holidays, I would tell my family about how I was doing, and I would get random compliments from extended family members. But my own parents never went out of their way to acknowledge or congratulate me for my accomplishments as an adult.

I knew better than to tell my mom about my high position at my company or how much I was making since I knew it would just make her resent me more. But I told my dad, and one year he even told me that he was happy for me. It was the nicest thing either my parents have ever told me.

Even as an adult, my mom still treated me like an unwanted guest. Although I only saw them during the holidays, she would do everything in her power to get the attention off me if anybody asked me a question or directed the conversation towards me.

For example, we were having Christmas dinner one year when my uncle congratulated me on a promotion I had been telling him about earlier that day. It was my second promotion within the company, and I had gotten a significant raise as well. I had been telling him about how I was looking into purchasing my first house.

My uncle mentioned the promotion and the potential house, and a few other extended family members congratulated me and were pretty unexpectedly kind about the news. Another one of my cousins asked me what area I was house shopping in.

That’s when my mom cut me off and said, “This is boring, can we change the conversation?”. Then under her breath I heard her say, “It’s probably not even true anyway”.

I ended up purchasing my house later that year. When I posted about it on social media, everybody in my family liked the post except for my mom. I knew she was probably angry because my sister was having a completely opposite life experience than me.

She had gone to college right out of high school, all paid for by my parents, and ended up failing out and getting pregnant by her first college boyfriend. I had a sneaking suspicion that my parents had asked her to get rid of the pregnancy, but she ended up keeping it.

She tried making it work with her baby dad that she had only known for four months. Well, it turns out that they were completely incompatible. But I guess that didn’t stop them from trying to make things work or solve their relationship by having another kid.

I remember having to hold back tears when I saw her posting about having a second child. I knew the baby was probably being born into a toxic environment since my sister was such an awful person, as was her baby dad.

I had met him at the holidays, but he never even bothered to remember my name or make conversation with me. Every year he would bring home trays of food, despite not bringing anything.

Obviously, my sister and I’s relationship did not improve as we grew up, and we basically didn’t talk to each other once we were both moved out of our parents’ place. We had each other on social media, and the few times where we would see each other during the holidays, my sister would make nasty comments to me about my weight or the way I was dressing.

I honestly think she was just projecting because I wear a lot of designer clothes and I like cycling through my designer purses. She would constantly ask me what fake purse I had brought this time.

One year as soon as I walked in the door for Thanksgiving she looked me up and down and said verbatim, “I see you’re dressed up again like the stuck up betch you are”. It was so ridiculously rude and uncalled for.

She would even constantly insult me right in front of her kids using curses and everything despite her kids being young. I don’t feel bad saying that my sister is pure trash and that I didn’t feel bad for anything I did after she dumped her kids on my doorstep out of nowhere one day.

I had just been relaxing in my house one weekend morning after a long work week when my doorbell rang. I was completely shocked to see my sister’s 10 and seven-year-old standing on my front porch holding overnight bags.

When I asked them what they were doing here, they said their mom was going on vacation for eight weeks and that she said I was watching them. My sister and I hadn’t spoken since our family’s July 4th BBQ where she told me not to have more than one plate because she was sick of staring at my muffin top. I had no idea why she thought I would be her free babysitter for two months.

My nephews were good, quiet kids who were obviously confused as well. So I let them inside while I started calling my sister. My sister ignored my first 10 calls, but I kept at it until she finally answered.