I'm getting tired of having to scold my brother for things I shouldn't be scolding him for, or at least things I don't really care about. Things between him, my mother and father are like a constant 3-way fight, and then there's me who tries to stay way far away from it all, but always ends up being sucked into it. If my brother disagrees with my mom, she'll turn to me and say, "Well Krista, what do you think?" or "Krista, don't you think that..." which translates into, aren't I right, and isn't Scott wrong?

I don't blame my brother for being the way he is, because he has always had it worse than me. I complain that he's allowed more freedom that I had at his age, which is true, but he has never been treated the same way as I have - not since he was born. I was the first baby, the first little girl, the first everything - I was even the first grandchild, on both sides. I was the adorable little princess who could do no wrong. I was spoiled like you wouldn't believe, and I still am. To this day I get the most attention, the most presents, the most money. When I was a brat (and trust me, I was), it was cute. When he was a brat, it wasn't. I can't remember a time when he wasn't being compared to me. So I learned to read at an earlier age, and my printing was neater when I was 5 and I was the star of the little plays in elementary school, and all of his life it's been, Why can't you be more like Krista?

My parents expect me to chastise him for skipping school or not doing his homework, because I was little miss straight-A student and I should be looking out for him like that. But the truth is, he's not a baby. He's old enough to understand that not doing his homework will give him bad grades. He's told me several times he doesn't want to go to college anyway, that he wants to join the army, which I think is cool, but that's not cool with the rest of my family. They don't understand that just telling him to go to school isn't going to make him go. It comes to point where they just have to accept that it's his decision, and as parents, there isn't much they can do. He's his own person, and as long as he understands the consequences...I don't see how these screaming matches are helping.

So my mom called me from work today to tell me that when he shows up after school with his girlfriend, that I'm to tell him to take her home right away, because she got another call from the school saying that he's missing five assignments in Earth Science and that he failed some test today because he was cheating. So it's me, again, who has to act like the bad guy and tell his girlfriend to get the hell out of our house so that he can do his homework.

I feel so horrible. I understand he has work to do and I understand my mom is fed up with dealing with his teachers, but I also know that if I had an older sibling who'd told me when I was 16 that I couldn't have my boyfriend over, I'd have to say, Mmm hmmm, well you can fuck off. My brother is bigger than me and taller than me. This isn't like I'm 8 and he's 5 and I can push him around and tell him to clean up his toys. If he doesn't want to do something I tell him to do, he's not going to do it, and that's the end of the story.

This is just going to end up bad. Even if he does take Kim home when I tell him to, I'm going to be stressing that this isn't me talking this is Mom talking, and so when she comes home, he's going to have a problem with her, and she'll yell, and my dad will come home, ask why everyone is yelling, he'll yell even louder and shut my brother up so he goes storming off into his room and slams the door and doesn't come out for dinner, my mom will start crying, I'll suggest that they shouldn't be so hard on him, mom will yell at me for not understanding what it's like to be her, I'll say "fine" and go up to my room, and it's happy times again in Krista's family.

If you ask me, he is the way he is because of my mom. I mean obviously not completely because of her, but I suspect she had a lot to do with it. Like I said, he has always been compared to me, especially when it comes to school. I specifically remember overhearing my mom tell Shannon's mom one day after school that she was afraid that Scott was "heading down the wrong path" or something to that effect, and how old were we? I had to be about nine, so he was probably six. Six years old, and my mom already thought he wasn't good enough. Teachers at our elementary school used to literally pull out old assignments of mine and show them to the class. I returned to visit when I was 15, and someone was still using something I'd done as an example. With Scott, she used to show it directly to him and say, See what your sister did? This is what yours should look like. He has never, ever been good enough.

The sad thing is, I have been aware of all of this since I can remember...and never once said anything.

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