As the oldest sibling, a stange new role I did not see coming for myself is “the person who knew and remembers”
More and more often I’m in a situation with my siblings where I’ll be like “What’s going on right now in the family makes sense because of what happened back then” and my siblings (the middle child is only two years younger than me btw) have no idea what I’m talking about and my little snippet of information suddenly change their whole worldview.
I wasn’t burdened with other people’s trauma and secrets, but I realize now that two years made all the difference even in our teenage years and I was just more aware and the adults talked to me and told me things and perhaps didn’t think to tell the others because they “already did it” or something?
And the crazy thing is, I don’t even know what history, knowledge and secrets I’m carrying around that would be complete news to the others. I feel like rattling off family history facts at the dinner table would be a bit tactless.
