The Eldest Daughter

Camille Ware

My clearest childhood memory is when I held my sister for the first time. She was so small and frail, bundled in soft white blankets. Her hair was dark and wispy, peeking underneath those knitted beanies they give out at the hospital. She was so tiny. 

I often wonder how much of my personality is shaped by my birth order. How much of me, if not all, is due to the fact that I was born first? 

Being the eldest daughter meant having to miss sleepovers and birthday parties because Mom was always working late and I needed to babysit. It was okay though because I had offered: I was free help and she needed as much of it as she could get. Her hair was thinning and falling out from all the stress and weight she was carrying around day to day, so as soon as I was able, I lifted the load.  

It was never too much to handle. It is never too much to handle. 

When I was a freshman in high school I was waking up at four in the morning to help my sisters get dressed and pack lunches from the meal plan I curated at the beginning of each week because I wanted to be helpful. That is always the goal: to be helpful–lessen the load until your back is practically breaking but you can’t let anyone know because this was a choice, your choice. And I chose to write notes in my sister’s lunchboxes with stupid jokes on them just like my mom used to do for me.

Being the eldest daughter means that I plan every birthday party. I buy the decorations a week in advance and I stay up until five in the morning to set them up. I bake a cake from scratch every year. I send out the invitations, I follow up with parents, and I make it happen.

I have never had a birthday party. 

I didn’t have my first sleepover until I was fourteen.

I have to order my own birthday cake. 

Being the eldest daughter means that I teach what no one ever taught me so that my sisters don’t face the same struggles I did so that they are spared of the embarrassment I experienced. No one ever taught me to do my hair but I’ve been doing my sister’s since I was ten. I just bought my twelve-year-old sister a basket of her own curly hair products as a Christmas gift with a tag that said “From Mom” on it.

Being the eldest means feeling like a parent and not like a sibling. I can’t tell my sisters about a school crush I have on a boy or why I’ve been crying for the past four days straight—I remind them to do homeworks and look over book reports and ask them why they didn’t finish their lunch. I had no one to look up to. I had no one to ask what to wear on a first date or how to put makeup on. No one to steal clothes from or ask for advice. I am meant to fill that role but how can I when I was never shown how?

I’ve come to realize that being the eldest means that I am never the one being surprised. I will always go above and beyond and kill myself bending over backward for people who would never lift a finger for me. I am always the listener and never the talker. I will always show up when you call. I will apologize when I never had to.

Being the eldest means that my mom hasn’t seen me cry in three years because I don’t want her to think I’m not doing well even if sometimes, I’m not. 

Being the eldest means that I felt like I abandoned them once I left for college—it seemed selfish to divorce my family and to even wonder what life was like without them constantly around; they had been my life’s purpose for so long. How could I possibly want freedom? Freedom feels like an exaggeration. Helping around was not a prison, but somewhere along the line of life, I traded my childhood at its expense.

I didn’t even realize how much of a childhood I wasn’t afforded until it was over. It’s almost as if when I held my sister for the first time, the door to childhood and childhood things began to close. I didn’t watch it close. How could I? I was too busy making sure my siblings’ childhood was magical, making sure it was everything mine wasn’t. I was so busy that I forgot I was only seven or eight or nine years old. I was so busy that I couldn't even try to stick my foot out to stop it. It had closed and locked and all I could do was stare at the wooden slate, reaching and longing for what I didn’t even realize I’d lost. 

And I don’t expect an apology because it was my choice. 

But I was seven. I was a seven-year-old little girl who just wanted to be helpful and thrived on feeling appreciated. 

And now in my embraced role as the eldest daughter, I am supposed to be perfect all the time but I won’t ever feel good enough. I am the role model who always needs to put on a brave face. I have to be the person that everyone leans on, but who am I supposed to lean on? Who am I supposed to trust? I’m the person who is never allowed to break… but I have been cracking for years. Surely, a seven-year-old isn’t meant to carry the same weight as her thirty-seven-year-old mother.

But I don’t want an apology. 

In my role as the eldest daughter, I put others first, I worry extensively,  I help with homework, I attend the concerts, I make the schedules, I plan the birthdays, I wrap the Christmas gifts, I make the reservations, I do the school supply shopping, I drive to and from, I know every in and out of every single person of the household, and I get absolutely nothing in return…

But I don’t need an apology.

I am a walking one-man show but I accept it with all that it comes because who even am I if not the eldest daughter?

Edited by Lauren Myers & Kate Castello