feeling like this right now

Been think­ing about a lot of things over the past few days. 

Had a ther­a­py ses­sion Wednes­day and saw my in-laws yes­ter­day. BTW, Herb Alpert and the Ti­jua­na Brass makes for good cook­ing mu­sic. Have also been deal­ing with some heavy fam­i­ly shit.

I’m an only child. Sans siblings. 

Thank­ful­ly this is chang­ing, but “only chil­dren” have his­tor­i­cal­ly got­ten a bad rap as be­ing self­ish, self-cen­tered, spoiled rot­ten, and weird in an un­de­sir­able way. (Even though it is en­tire­ly pos­si­ble to raise an only and not have them end up any of those things.)

I mean, I ab­solute­ly will not deny that I got more than I would have had there been more than just me. At the same time, I did “earn”” things through good grades and be­hav­ior. It was a unique sit­u­a­tion that I wouldn’t have had with even one sibling.

Any­way, through­out my life I’ve had count­less peo­ple ask me how I feel about not hav­ing sib­lings. The first in­stance I can re­mem­ber was when I was very small and my mom ex­plained to some lady at the gro­cery store that I was “it” and the lady leaned down with her hands on her knees and said to me, “Aw! Don’t you wish you had a lit­tle broth­er or sis­ter?”

And pre-fil­ter lit­tle Emi­ly said, “No,” in the most “why-the-fuck-would-I-want-that?” tone and her eyes got huge and she just sort of slow­ly stood up and went back to talk­ing to my mom about whatever. 

The ob­vi­ous an­swer that I can give as an adult is “I don’t know any dif­fer­ent.”

The most re­cent time was with my ther­a­pist. She asked how I felt about not hav­ing any sib­lings be­cause the main top­ic has been my child­hood and up­bring­ing and my par­ents, pri­mar­i­ly my mother. 

I said, “Re­lieved,” but not be­cause I’m jazzed that I got to be the only one in the spot­light or anything. 

It’s far more com­pli­cat­ed than that.

“Re­lieved” be­cause (first and fore­most), I wouldn’t want any­one else to go through what I went through. “Re­lieved” be­cause what are the odds of two or more kids get­ting out of that whole fucked up sit­u­a­tion and all be­ing safe, healthy, hap­py, and suc­cess­ful like I am (and I STILL have de­pres­sion and anxiety)? 

“Re­lieved” be­cause – had there been a sib­ling in the mix – who knows where I’d be? Who I’d be? Maybe I’d still be me, but maybe not. 

It nev­er should have been even just me. My par­ents had zero busi­ness get­ting mar­ried let alone hav­ing a kid. I’m still grap­pling with how I end­ed up where I am con­sid­er­ing my cir­cum­stances. I don’t know that my lev­el of suc­cess com­pared to my up­bring­ing would have hap­pened twice.

I told my ther­a­pist how, as I got old­er, I imag­ined hav­ing a younger sis­ter, very close to me in age and in heart.

We’d have pro­tect­ed each oth­er and looked out for one an­oth­er. Maybe I would have been even more mo­ti­vat­ed to break out on my own at eigh­teen so she could come be with me when she turned eigh­teen. Of course, had I had a younger sis­ter, there’s no guar­an­tee any of this would have happened. 

I could have also had a younger broth­er (and I al­most did). It’s just what I like to think the best case sce­nario would have been had I had a sibling. 

I heard way too many times (one time is too many times but I def­i­nite­ly heard it more than once) that my mom want­ed a boy, then a girl. 

My mom was also ob­sessed with ba­bies but was one of those peo­ple that, once they start to grow up, can’t han­dle them be­com­ing their own in­de­pen­dent, au­tonomous peo­ple so she gets Big Mad.

I just hap­pened to have an in­de­pen­dent streak from day one, much to her cha­grin, and she only had me. So as soon as I start­ed to defy her (in en­tire­ly in­nocu­ous, nat­ur­al ways) that was it. It was all over, and we’ve nev­er had any­thing that re­sem­bled a good re­la­tion­ship since.

But yeah, just me. And I’m re­al­ly thank­ful for that.

Ther­a­py Emi­ly is a force to be reck­oned with.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2023 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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