Oldest daughter
Growing up in my Indian household, being the oldest daughter felt like starring in a script written by tradition. What was I made for? To carry the family’s weight on my shoulders, a responsibility handed down through generations. When I was younger, I was honored to be someone who was trusted by my family so much that they allowed me to keep their honor intact by following this tradition. But as I got older, that weight became a combination of family expectations, societal rules, and cultural duties.
My mom and I are often told we look like alike and so, people expect that I would grow up to be like her as well. You see, in my mom’s case she basically sacrificed her whole life to handle her family. While she had dreams and aspirations of her own, her father passed away when she was only 16 (my current age), and she was given the responsibility of holding up the burden of her entire family. Literally abandoning any hopes of flourishing in her own career, as soon as my mom got her family on track, she was married right away. In her eyes, she wasted her whole life away. But in the eyes of society, she did what a woman should do by devoting her entire life to her family. While my mom always told me to be a “strong, independent woman” while growing up, she couldn’t help but plant some of the ideas that were ingrained in her mind by her family.
“You know you’re the oldest daughter and need to be managing the house at this point. When I was your age, I didn’t mess around so much.” I’d been hearing this same phrase since I was about 8 or 9. Before I could even make decisions of my own, I had this huge responsibility that I should know what’s best for my family. I needed to single-handedly do well in school, help my brother do well in school, take care of the house, tend to my parents, be the “emotional support” everyone needs, and still manage not to break down under all this stress? I found myself at a crossroad, questioning who I was versus who I was supposed to be. But in that struggle, I figured out that strength wasn’t about going solo in this, it was about rewriting the script.
I tried to reshape that weight into a shared responsibility between my entire family, something that could honor the roots of tradition while letting me chase my own dreams. Truthfully, I did not want to make the same mistake and sacrifice my teenage years to be a robot for my family. Through lots of thinking and talking with my family, I came to the conclusion that it is possible to let go of traditions, especially those that carry a lot of generational trauma with them. I am reshaping the narrative for myself and for the generations coming after me. Though, I am still figuring it out and know that many of my relatives will think of me lowly for being “rebellious” against my own family, isn’t that what life is about? Rather than carrying the burden, I’m aiming to share the load.
(A response to prompt #2)
I really like how you used quotes, not to designate something as evidence that agrees with your evidence, but instead to mock ideas that you don't really agree with. You never use quotes to cite something that supports your ideas, as one usually does, but instead to take statements that disagree with your argument and worldview and put them in quotes to make it seem like they're supporting your view even though they're not. It's almost like you're taunting people who see you as "rebellious" or "emotional support" by making them look like they're supporting your argument by putting their words in quotes even through they're insulting you.
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