Favoritism Between Children

[The Spark]

My brother Gage, for his birthday, was given the choice of basically either getting the coolest used car my parent could find, or an awesome expensive (electric) guitar. He went with the most expensive guitar he could find, and then also the most expensive case for it that he could find, bringing the total price for his birthday to about $920.

For my last birthday, I got a cheapest, crappiest phone possible on my network. My parents said if I was to get one, it basically had to suck, and so, I picked one that was the most bearable cheapest one I could. Then, on my birthday, I opened my present, and viola, a crappy phone.

A month after I got my phone, for no apparent reason whatsoever, not for a special occasion, not for a holiday, not for his birthday, but just out of the blue, my mom decided to get my brother the best and most expensive phone on our network (at the time).

Now, it's my brother's birthday again, and since we didn't have any money hardly, my mom decided to just give him $200 for whatever he wanted a week ago. Originally, a month before his birthday, he wanted another really expensive guitar, but mom said yes, but we didn't have the money so she gave him all that she could instead, and he spent it the other day. Today it actually is his birthday, and we have money again (my step-dad's pay-check was delayed, so we had to wait an extra two weeks until we had any money), and mom decided that she's going ahead with the idea of getting him another guitar, so along with the $200 that she gave him a few days ago, the price for his birthday is at about $1000. On a side note, I have almost no clothes (aside from some that I bought off the internet with my own money). My mom keeps saying she's going to get me some someday because I really need them, but guess what never happens? However, my brother Gage has so many expensive, awesome clothes that he can't even fit them all in his drawer things in his room, he has so many that he's going to have to get a bigger case for them, and right now it's already pretty large. Also, he has never bought his own clothes, except just the other day he bought some band t-shirts with his birthday money.

As of late, I still have a crappy phone, and he still has a really expensive smart phone.


My mom HATES driving, despises it in fact. Every time someone in my family needs a ride from my mom, she complains about it before, during, and after, talking about how she's always doing things for us, and how we are selfish and only think about ourselves, just because we want to get somewhere (usually I'm the only one that ever hears this though, she's almost always fine with driving my older brother around).

My brother is extremely gifted at the guitar, like none other. He could literally shred your face off with his musical powers, and up until about 5 months ago, it was all self taught. 5 months ago, he decided he wanted to get guitar lessons to better heighten his skills, mostly in musical theory. And so, my mom got him guitar lessons, which implied driving 40 minutes to get to his teachers house, and then waiting an hour for it to finish by just driving around, and then picking him up and driving him all the way back home, spending about $40 each lesson. We did this once a week for about 2 months, and then the teacher decided he can just teach Gage at a music store here in town. For the next 2 months, we drove Gage back and forth to the music store (we live 5 minutes out of town), spending $25 for 30 minutes of lessons once a week.

3 months before it even happened, I asked my mom if I could participate in basketball, meaning she would have to drive me to practice once and while, and sometimes to the school so I could ride school bus with my teammates to wherever the game would be held. She was extremely reluctant, went along with the usual complaining, and continued to chew me out and complain about how she was going to have to do it for the next 3 months. When basketball finally started, she decided to change her mind. I missed basketball, but mom didn't have "go out of her way" to drive me to and fro to the school, right?

In school last year, Gage was suspended for for putting inappropriate stickers all over the walls in his school, and ended up having to go to summer school because his suspended days were the 3 last days of school, meaning his missed a bunch of finals that he couldn't retake. I figured mom would be furious, because she would have to take him to summer school, and Gage got suspended, so I couldn't help but feel kind of enthusiastic that finally Gage would be in trouble. In the end, mom ended up laughing over the whole thing, and drove him to summer school everyday for a couple weeks without a single complaint. I once got a detention for getting three tardies in a class, meaning mom would have to pick me up at 4 instead of 3. I think you know what happened.

I've told my mom all of this and how it upsets me (at least hinted it), except I elaborated on the phone thing, and she says she'll fix it, she'll "get me next time" (fix it so it's better for me next time), but it's always the same way, all the time. Honestly, I'm really really getting tired of it, but I just don't know what else I can do at this point. I would really try to explain this to her, but for the last 3 months, she's been constantly drunk, sleeping in her room, acting like a mindless, drunken zombie, that can't hang on to a single word. I guess I'm just really frustrated, and I don't get why she would favor him over me, when she ALWAYS says that she loves us equally, which I can easily tell at this point, isn't true... Meh

[Deepfake]

Money doesn't equal love, gotta say. That sounds like a rough situation, but there are tons of people who don't get what you get. My parents never would've gotten me something frivolous like a 900 dollar guitar just because I wanted it, or even my own cell phone. She might see it as an important contribution to his future, though, if he's got the potential to be as talented as you think.

Things don't always work out to be fair when you're the youngest, really. I learned from very young that my parents had a bias against my younger age, and that when the time came I wouldn't necessarily get the same things my brother did when he had been the same age because circumstance would change. Honestly, as much as your parents and the world at large tell you things should be fair and you should work toward fairness, it's not and you'll never get there. When you have something, someone else does not. It's important to value what you have, because you might have to go without someday.

Of course, I don't think I've ever been so insulted as when I felt my brother was being treated better or given more attention. I still have a vivid memory of a time when, even when we were really already adults, one of my parents decided to do the practical thing and hand out slices of cake at my brother's birthday party in a linear circle around the table. I was skipped due to their inattentiveness, and told I'd get mine at the end. Well, my luck was that I was forgotten at the end, too. I don't know why that made me feel so neglected, but it really struck deep to some memory of always being put off until later.

Thinking of these things now, I still feel just as unimportant and unworthy of everyone's attention as I ever did. That stings, and I'm sorry if it's something you've experienced. Perhaps we all do at some point in our life. I think the largest blow came in many ways where if something good happened for me, it seemed like it was something I had to share with my brother. As if I wasn't important enough to acknowledge on my own.

It might be some kind of complex I've got, but I've even noticed when people put my name after another's when I'm addressed. It's so typical.

[Metal Man]

I hardly get anything. Count your cheap phone blessings, 'cuz I've had to live in a room with no air conditioning in the middle of infernally hot California for years.

My phone is much cheaper, too; value of it right now is somewhere around $5. It's monochrome and a brick. Although technically that's because I hate Smart Phones, so, that isn't really a parental thing.

The point is, not only do not all parents give money like that, not all of them even have that money.

As for being driven around, I've had to take the bus while my sister has been driven to ballet for years on end. Sometimes, life isn't fair, and you just have to deal with it, unfortunately.