Oldest Daughters
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... an overachieving, burnt-out oldest daughter entering her late-twenties and discovering her identity for the first time ever!
Don’t even worry about it, she called for a reservation last week. Can you put everyone in a group chat? I’m sure she has a spreadsheet for that (she does). Renew her passport? She renewed that bad boy 9 months before it expired, just like the U.S. Department of State recommends.
I’ll take care of it. She is always so on top of everything!
What genre of human is best suited for management roles? Oldest Daughters.
Give me a form to fill out and a deadline / a shipment that came in wrong and a customer service number / an event to plan and a budget, and don’t even worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it *(the task and, of course, the worrying). Did you get the itinerary I emailed you? Here, I’ll airdrop it to you. There has to be a reason for my adult acne and I’m sure the reason has nothing to do with my suffocating, stress-inducing, perpetual need to handle everything for everyone whenever possible.
Am I an oldest daughter, or do I just have severe anxiety? Which of the two can explain why I cannot allow another person to grocery shop for me? Why I will never show up empty-handed to any event where food is being served, even if the host insists I not bring anything. That last one is likely due more to the patriarchy than my need to be liked (or perhaps the patriarchy is also to blame for my need to be liked).
Having a pharmacy of quick remedies in my purse, always having a stick of gum, carrying a sewing kit in my car (next to my Narcan) makes me feel good. Need something? A mint, a hair tie, a spare pair of socks / underwear / tire chains? Ask me. I have it.
And now I’m here, graduated and on my way to the only postsecondary a people-pleaser can afford: burnout. I people-pleased a little too close to the sun and as a result, self-care was incinerated. Years spent not caring for myself culminated in the realization that empathy and altruism were killing me, and that I was really just a phony.
There is nothing noble about the way I neglected myself, and I wasn’t really doing anyone any favors in that state anyway. I was the agreeable shell of a person. There is something so powerful about oldest daughters, and even more so about oldest daughters who step in to their power. I have outgrown agreeable.
In my quest to shed my agreeable exoskeleton and discover who on Earth I actually am, I’ve discovered that the people I love have also become used to Abbie the Doormat. I’ve discovered that reasonable boundaries have a tendency to scare away unreasonable, emotionally unintelligent people.
No, you do not get to purposefully leave me out of something and then act like nothing happened. No, I cannot do that thing for you that you procrastinated and turned into an emergency. No, I am no longer allowing you to have a place in my life you don’t feel is worth going out of your way to maintain.
Sure, I’ll still keep track of the boarding passes at the airport and bring the cookies to work for everyone’s birthdays. I’ll still stay up on the phone with you when it’s late and you’re trying not to fall asleep while driving through the pitch black night. I’ll still remind you to schedule your colonoscopy and I’ll inspect the suspicious mole on your back. I’ll bring you your favorite drink from 7/11 and I’ll call you on the anniversary of when your mom died. I’ll do all of that, not because the desire to be liked is drowning me, but because I want to.
Most of all, I am no longer wearing my Oldest Daughter Burnout like a Girl Scouts merit badge. I am no longer tripping over myself to be the most agreeable, most easy going person in the room.
And if I walk into a room where that is expected, then I’ll just turn around and walk right back out.