Confessions of the Family Dud

I have a cute little decorative plaque hanging above my household altar to Christ/Hildegard von Bingen/Freddie Mercury. It was a Christmas gift from my brother, and it reads “Family is your anchor.” Which is correct — I’ve always been very close to my family, and they are the anchor that keeps my feet on the ground when I’m feeling too big for my britches, or whatever the saying is. We’re a blue-collar working class family of hillbillies, after all, and I’ve learned from them to never forget where I came from.

Strong work ethic runs in my family, going back to the farmers and miners who left Appalachia to find a better life working in Michigan’s many factories. That same blood runs through my father’s veins, having retired after many years as a union steelworker, and continues through my generation. In fact, both of my siblings managed to break out of our income bracket and probably make enough to be considered upper middle class at this point. My sister is a successful businesswoman, while my brother does…powerwashing I think? All I know is he makes beaucoup cash from it. The point is, they’re the American dream, a couple of the rare folks who actually did manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Which probably explains why they’re Republican while the rest of my family are staunch Democrats, but this isn’t a political post.

Nope, it’s about me, the family dud.

I’ll be honest — sometimes I look at my brother and sister and wonder how I’ll ever stack up to them. My brother has the perfect white picket fence life with a wife, four kids, and a dog. My sister doesn’t have any children, but she gets to jetset around the world at the drop of a hat and mingle with powerful people. And then there’s the baby of the family, me, the artsy weirdo with a cat.

I had a lot of hopes placed on me as a kid. When my brother was a teenager, he was a bit of a troublemaker, and my sister didn’t have much of a direction throughout her younger years. But I was a responsible kid who finished at the top of her class and never got in trouble and had a ton of talent in a variety of fields. I was on track to become a doctor, in fact! And on top of that, I was conventionally attractive — the skinny doe-eyed blonde with big boobs. I was basically Barbie.

I know I compare myself to my brother and sister a lot, but the problem is me. I’m the former gifted kid burnout everyone talks about. In these cases, I think it’s important to remember that we’re in different stages of life. There’s a sixteen year age gap between me and my siblings, after all. They didn’t have it all together yet when they were my age. You’re not supposed to compare the beginning of your story to the middle of someone else’s, and I haven’t even been an adult for the majority of my life.

Maybe if I’m in the same place as I am right now in another ten years, I’ll have reason to worry, but I honestly shouldn’t be. All things considered, my trajectory is pretty great. I’m an internship and a certification exam away from finishing my degree, and after that, we’re planning on kids and a masters degree. Maybe I won’t have the financial success of my siblings — or maybe I will. Maybe my band will take off. But I’m not going to stress about it.

Something funny happened when I told my sister about my insecurities. She said she was jealous of me. She’d tried to take up guitar as a teenager and wimped out because her fingers hurt too much. She wished she was creative and musically talented as much as I wished I was business savvy and smart like her. She thought I was silly for comparing myself to her! My brother-in-law, the like, regional director of freakin’ Quicken Loans, said something similar when my artist wife mentioned feeling like her family’s dud. He wished he could create art like she could!

We think of creatives as duds, but in reality, so many wildly successful people wish they were creative. Maybe instead of wallowing in the fact that we’re not successful by the world’s standards, we just keep creating and doing what gives us life. We’re just wired differently, and that’s okay. You wouldn’t judge an eagle for its ability to run, nor would you judge a cheetah for its ability to fly.

I’d like to think I’m carving out my own niche in my family, using that same work ethic that got the farmers and steelworkers and powerwashers and businesswomen who came before me through life. I’d like to think I’m making them proud in my own way, even if it’s just writing and playing music. The world needs that sometimes.