Being the oldest in a family of 9 kids, I became "independent" very fast. I was "parentified", and the more I excelled at the tasks I was given, the more my parents expected me to do those tasks every day and be responsible for them as if I was an adult. (Feeding younger siblings, babysitting all day, cleaning everything, doing everyone's laundry).

Essentially I became such a high functioning adult, my parents sat back and enjoyed letting/forcing me to do it all for my last 6 years living there.

The moment I could leave for college, I did and I never went back. My parents resented me for not coming back every summer to make things clean and organized like I did before. My younger siblings resented me for abandoning them, because I'd been their parent for years and then just left them to be neglected by their real parents.

It's taken a while to repair those damaged relationships with my siblings. It's like they have "mommy problems" with me because I was so much more than just their older sister. Some of them have stopped talking to me because they still hold grudges.

I still struggle with feeling emotionally neglected. You just become your own emotional support for so long...it's hard to trust others with your needs.

And it's frustrating that all those compliments growing up about how "mature" and "grown up" I was, from other adults, was just cluelessness on their part. They had no idea what was going on at home and that I was really neglected.