The tropes of the middle child are so cliche. Ya know, the one that is sandwiched in the middle and therefore never heard. Lmao. Just kidding. But yeh, I do find middle child syndrome tropes pretty funny cause I do relate very well to them. One thing that has always been huge for me was fairness and equity and equality. I have a strong sense of fairness and get really angry and annoyed when things are perceived as unfair to me. That’s probably why I like working in healthcare because that’s a way I can bring equality and equity to people I care about. I get really sad when I see suffering too, especially in vulnerable populations. It breaks my heart when I see an animal that isn’t loved. And sometimes I just can’t bear to kill insects either - I actually just bagged a cockroach despite being freaking scared, and just flung it into the garden. I just didn’t feel like killing an insect that day. I perhaps have a bit too much empathy… but I get really sad when I put myself in their shoes and think that they’re just having a will to live. And it’s so unfair for me to take the life of an insect. But sometimes, I just had to kill a spider. I didn’t know how to bring it outside. I really wanted to but I was also really scared.
This sense of fairness has proliferated into all aspects of my life. Maybe that’s why I get so annoyed when I perceive bias. Like that one time when my colleague, who was on the same project as I was and also at the same level, was told that he could go for a promotion by my coach whilst my coach told me I didn’t have enough business development hours. I knew he didn’t either because he was on the same project as me and I knew where he spent his time. I resented my coach for a bit after that because I just felt like that was double standards. But perhaps the world is inherently unfair. I get so angry when I hear about the atrocities being committed against certain groups in the world (I don’t want to type the ethnicities because I don’t want those bots on my website). And it makes me so angry with how they’re not given food and water (you can deduce). I wish the world was fairer to people who are disadvantaged and those who have atrocities committed against them. It breaks my heart. I had to not follow the news so much because it was actually starting to get to me.
Fairness is perhaps a key value in my heart. And I realised how much I was still holding on in the name of fairness. One thing that I felt was really unfair was how I never got a say in how that situationship thing ended. One day he was here, the next day he never responded so I figured that was it, I was ghosted. It was unfair to be left to pick up the pieces, without even getting to say how it made me feel. It made me feel like I was worthless. Maybe the sense of unfairness kept simmering away for me. I felt confused when I could see that he just could simply move on with a relationship whilst I was just still reconciling with the feelings that I was left flung with. Maybe I hadn’t been able to face this sense of anger and frustration at the sheer unfairness to be treated this way. I don’t think I deserved it. But I admit, perhaps why I go around in circles with how I feel is because I cannot admit that I was treated really unfairly. I never wanted to label anyone as a villain because I just don’t want to do that. But maybe finding grace within myself is admitting that whatever happened was really unfair and I really didn’t deserve it.
The thing about life is that it is unfair. You can never control how people are. But perhaps the anger is actually not at him, but actually at me. I was probably angry at myself for never being able to voice how I truly felt about what happened because I then violated my self-worth. I didn’t stand up for myself and ironically, one of my biggest values is fairness. So no wonder I feel so strongly about fairness in everything - I haven’t even been fair to myself. But being fair to myself isn’t getting back at anyone, no. That only proliferates the pain and I think maybe I am past that now. Perhaps fairness is giving myself a life that I think I deserve. Fairness is respecting myself enough to love myself the way I want to be loved. Fairness is standing up for myself. It’s self-respect. And maybe that starts now.