Eldest Daughters Club (All eldest afab people welcome)

I am the eldest of eight. I identify as gender fluid because I don't feel like a woman, but I can't completely separate myself from womanhood. I'm the eldest daughter, the oldest sister. The trauma I have experienced I feel I would't have experienced if I wasn't afab. Sometimes, the whole world was on my shoulders. I was the eldest daughter of a woman who struggled with her own trauma around womanhood her whole life. A woman who drank and did other things to diminish those feelings. I watched her drown her demons in liquor. And my dad wasn't around. And my brothers' dad was barely around. I was responsible for my siblings. Three brothers living with me, two sisters who visited. Sometimes my six cousins too. I took on the role of a mother and wife. I was parentified and subject to emotional incest by all of my parental figures but especially my mother and my brothers' dad. My siblings now live states away and I still feel like I abandoned them sometimes. Like, their upbringing was my responsibility... and I failed. I always had to be something more because I was the oldest and I was a "girl" and that's just how it is. Something more than I was. I feel like I stole from my future.

The fact that so many parents openly admit to their older child being the practice child. And, then they joke about it. Like the lack of knowledge that lead to their mistakes didn't affect us in any real way.