Middle Child Syndrome

Hi everyone, my name is Ashley Taylor and I suffer from middle child syndrome. I've been a middle child for 11 long years now. I have an older sister as well as an older brother. Exactly 11 years ago, when I was just 11 years old, I got bumped from the baby of the family to the second youngest. I accepted this only because my new baby sister, Jaden was too damn adorable for me to even think about putting her an a basket and setting her on the doorstep of a random young couple and tying to convince my parents that the stork took her back to Babyland. So I embraced it. I happily took on the title of "big sister." Life was good.

Then the unthinkable happened. Two years later, my dear mother decide it would be cute to pop out another. This time a boy. My new baby brother Jared, then became the baby of the Taylor family. What did this mean for poor Ashley? This meant that poor Ashley, who was once the star of the show, was now bumped to the middle. Now I can assure you, at the time, I was 13 and had no problem sharing the attention with my two younger siblings. In fact, less attention on me meant that I can get away with staying up that extra hour on a school night, or sneaking on a tab bit of lipgloss before heading to the mall with friends on Friday evenings. I loved it!!!

However, over the years, little attention turned into hardly any, which turned into none, which has presently turned into looks of confusion on the faces of my family members as they struggle figure out why there's a stranger in the kitchen making Eggo waffles. Well!! I'll tell you why!! It's becuz I fu#kin LOVE EGGO WAFFLES!!!! They used to know that! Everyone used to know that! In fact they used to bring waffles to me on a tray, while I lay in bed, marveled at the fact that they never forgot to add extra butter and syrup....jusssst the way I like it! I USED TO BE LOVED DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's worse is that some of you know that I am the darkest in my family!! I swear to God, I live with the Simpsons! Every member of my family is a funny shade of yellow except me. I got the chocolate goodness thanks to my dad!! (Thanks Daddy! :) And the joke is, I'm not even that dark skinned so you can only IMAGINE how light the rest of the fam is!!

Look at this tomfoolery!!!

Crazy right!! Cuz it's not enough that I'm the hated middle child, but I have to be the only non yellow one too!!!!

You guys might think I'm being sensitive or dramatic, but MCS (Middle Child Syndrome) is not to be taken lightly. My friends still refer to me as "The Mailman's daughter!" I find myself doing stupid things to get attention...for example, eating the last tea biscuit even though I know my mom wanted it, just so she could acknowledge me even if it means screaming at the top of her lungs and sending me to the store to buy more.

Where's the love?? THERE IS NONE LEFT FOR ME!!! The two youngest get the most obviously, becuz they're the babies. Then the two oldest becuz they were here first, and by the time it gets around to pay a little love to the left over kid, there's not a single drop left! So I go without any. Then I become bitter so I turn to others, such as my friends and significant other to make it better. Do you know what I get told in return? "Ashley, you're too hard to please." "Ashley, you're too spoiled. Stop being a diva." Or my personal favourite "Ashley, your so selfish! It's can't always be all about YOU!"

The other day I woke up, completely alone in my house. I had no idea where anyone was becuz of course, nobody thought I was important enough to leave me a note on my door or even a half ass text message! I wondered through the house until I got to the room where we keep all our family photo albums. I decided to take a moment to stop and look through them in attempt to lift my spirits. As I sat on the floor, flipping through the pages, I saw images of happiness and childhood memories, that had now become so distant, I almost forgot they even existed. There had to been about 4 albums dedicated completely to me! My parents had carefully selected fantastic photos of me on school trips, riding my first bicycle, taking my first steps, cutting my birthday cake, etc. Each photo revealed the joy writen all over my face as I marveled in all the attention and focus that was put on me. I was the shining star. That's all it took for me to be happy!

I'm not gonna share all the symptoms of MCS with you right away. I don't want any of you to think I'm overly odd. Just try to understand why I do some of the things I do. I am an attention-deprived-22-year-old-middle-child!!! Have pity on my soul!!!