Watching

I'm the first born.
Your stereotypical, stubborn, independent, academic first child.
Whether there was someone coming after me or not, I carved a path. I left my mark. I took steps and chose directions that defined me. But those decisions also defined what it was to be a child in my family.
I bumped shoulders and pushed my way through strict rules and the paranoid parenting strategy of "I've never done this before!" The rules bent, the expectations began to changed until my parents and I came to an understanding of what was expected from both parties, and thus we live in peace.

Then comes the second child.
Social, fun-loving, impulsive and desperately unique.
She is under the standard that I have set. It's inevitable that my growing up in this family defined what was then on expected from a child of this family.

I'm watching as she is fiercely fighting those expectations. Screaming to be heard as an individual.

In my mind, it parallels a butterfly hatching from its cocoon. She is the butterfly, delicate and raw. Recently submerged in the fluid of freedom and individuality. She is surrounded and contained by a tough shell of who she is told to be. The interests she's told to hold, the behavior she's told to carry out. Even the opportunities she's presented with fall under the shadow of the path I've already shaped.
She is breaking the skin. She is clawing at the shell. She is seeking the light.
To be exposed and for her beauty to be compared to the world, only to find there is none like it.

She is nothing like me. Her beauty is much her own. Her interests are not my interests. Her character is uniquely her, and there is no part of me in that.

It's the fight to be recognized as an individual. To break all expectations. To ignore what you're supposed to do, and to instead courageously follow your heart to find what you are.
How dare we hold her back.
How dare we push her down a path someone else carved.
How dare we deprive her of the right to step in her own direction, carving a path of her own.
How dare we stifle her beauty and hide it from the world.