the breadwinner

i woke up today in the foulest of moods considering I had such a wonderful night's rest. there is something that must be said about parental expectation and the pressure it puts on a child. my mom is a staunch believer that pressure is the best motivator. expectations that raise the bar are what causes children to excell. I never had the courage to tell her otherwise.

the story of my life as a child would always be the kind where i was the dumb kid. algebra never made sense to me the x's and y's for all i knew meant the same thing. i could never understand why and how numbers could be substituted by the alphabet. letters had no room in the damning halls of mathematics, i believed then. at that time too my mother's opening lines, especially during sermons, would be "i dont like to compare but 'X' is a better student then you..she has higher grades...etc". whenever she started that line a rebuttal would form in my mind..."If you hate comparing then why do it in the first place?". My whole grade school life I felt like an outsider looking at the toystore. All my mom's friends had daugthers that were silver or gold awardees, garnering the highest academic posts. and here I was, her daughter, achieving only mediocre grades and barely even able to scrape a B as a grade point average.

high school changed things, forever. I excelled in a new school and was the glory child. i immersed myself in everything and anything simply because I wanted to prove people wrong. I became student council president, merit awardee and was always at the top of my class. this achievements always came at a price: fun. I never had fun. Living far from school made it impossible for me to spend time with classmates after class hours. And being an academic do gooder automatically labeled me the "geek" and connotated someone you could never have fun with. But these winnings of mine in school gave me the acceptance that i always looked for in my mom's eyes. I never heard her utter that damning line again. I was accepted in the college of my choice, in a course that is very competitive and havent look back since.

but now this about face has ruined life for me. Now i am the one child she expects everything from. Sometimes i hate taking initiative because i know it would draw her ever watchful eyes on me. I dont tell her about the things I do in school like the time i graduated from guitar class, or how I am a Eucharistic Officer, or how people rely on me because that would just make her expect even more. Sometimes i find it unfair that the standards she sets for me are so unbalanced compared to those she sets for my siblings. She throws a fit when my grades don't make into the dean's list...which has been all the time. but its quite alright for my brother to get barely passing grades.

is this because I have set a very colorful norm? is it because she knows i can do better?

I know i can do better. but the constant pushing, prodding, pressure and what have you does take its toll. I spent today running around doing her errands at 8am while my siblings were able to stay in bed until 10am after a night of partying. I went to the same party, got home at the same time, but why does it seem perfectly alright to wake me up at an earlier time to do work when my siblings enjoy precious sleep? what am i missing here? was there something i actually did right, so correct and perfect i was that its changed everything?

i am the breadwinner, i think when a time comes for all of us kids to grow up. I'll be the one where all the responsibility gets dumped on, the one who does everything. I am Ms. Independent and Ms. Do it all...

that doesnt sound too much like a ripe future.