The siblings I never had
Posted: 23/06/2025
Quite often I think about how different my life was if my brother and sister were here with me.
Ever since 2022 I have been struggling to reconcile the idea that I have never found very much meaningful to my life and towards the people I know, no matter how much people tell me otherwise. I know that's incredibly unfair to everyone who has tried to give me meaning. I just haven't been able to understand why I've almost never felt satisfied, always ending up being the second option to someone else.
Some context: after my mum had me in China, she became pregnant with two other babies; a son and a daughter. People who know me personally probably know I talk about the One Child Policy and the heinous effects it had on families and children for the decades it was in place. Actually, the One Child Policy was not the deciding factor here, but rather financial reasons. They were aborted.
When I think of a meaningful friendship I don't necessarily think that it is something which is always guaranteed or easy. In fact that may be part of its meaning. I feel like a meaningful friendship is less conditional, though. Differences are as important in binding each other as the similarities of both friends. The key thing is that neither is afraid of losing the other, because they accept one another for who they are, and otherstand one another. They may not necessarily spend a lot of time together, but it probably goes that they do see each other a lot, and they're comfortable inviting them to things they want to go to. Most of all, they know each others' opinions, and ask of them without hesitancy.
I guess what I see of siblings is that they have been meaningful from the beginning. Similarities and differences are amplified. Siblings always have an excuse to know what the other is doing and thinking. Of course, those relationships don't necessarily remain meaningful - I know siblings don't always get along. I just think that they're much easier to be meaningful. It's someone who you can understand because they go through similar things as you; they return to the same house, live under the same parents, experience the other's struggle.
I have stepbrothers but I would not be able to say that my relationship with them is meaningful; to be fair my relationship with them barely exists outside of the times I go to Australia, and even then. They're not necessarily amiable to one another but they still have a bond I never got to experience.
I find myself to be a very reserved person, not knowing what he wants of himself and not being able to talk to anybody about it because they really never got to know me - and besides, talking about personal problems is not the foundation of a friendship. I feel like I've missed out on a lot of life, though I've seen so many countries already and have a standard of life enviable by most of the world's standards. I go through periods where I find myself being unable to understand anybody or anything, it seems. I don't have anyone I feel like I can immediately talk to and get an honest evaluation, understanding what I've said as much as what as what I haven't said. I don't even think that's a job for a counsellor. Where do you even go? Who would be willing to get to know you, if you felt this way? How can much of life be sorted for you and you lack the appreciation to go along with it? Why do you choose the life you don't feel living?
I first asked those questions in 2022, at the end of year 12. I was in Auckland attending a forum of students interested in studying the sciences. The people around me were smarter than what I thought I could ever be. They knew what they wanted from their lives; they just didn't know how they wanted it, and, all things considered, the forum provided an effective way to solving that problem for them. And at the same time, they found people who ended up wanting the same things as them. But I didn't know what I wanted, and that made the forum a much more difficult experience for me. I was unable to make any connection with anybody throughout the forum, while all I could see was people living their best lives with their newest friends. Although it was a personal failure of mine to make an effort, it felt unfair at that time.
Those questions and uncertainties have hit me consistently with every break in the educational calendar since (and right on time now, since I had my last mid-year exam two days ago). Somehow I haven't been able to trust myself to make meaningful friendships. The answer seems to simply trust in myself that I can. And yet I feel awfully lacking when I seem to fall back down to earth again. Where do I get the confidence to be confident? Why are the people who give me confidence always so scarce? Why do I feel like I'm forced to wait for something to happen, after countless attempts to make something happen for myself?
It's not that I feel like having my brother and sister with me would have necessarily solved my lack of direction. Rather I feel like they would be someone I could talk to. They could be people I actually make things happen with. But nobody has ever been there for me for that. Not that it's anybody's duty to, whether I had siblings or not. But it seems like something someone meaningful could do.
At the very least, I wish I could have known my brother and sister, and what they would have been like, what experiences I could have shared with them, what their interests are, whether they could rely on me and I could rely on them. My life would be unrecognisably different with them to give me meaning to my own life. I don't even know if they ever got names. But there's little I can do but hope they're okay.