Immediate Resignation from the Position of Eldest Daughter

Dear Family,

After years of unpaid labor and emotional triage (as would be expected of an eldest daughter), I've decided that I'm out.

I resign, effective immediately, and with zero intention of reapplying. My previous concerns have been left unaddressed, dismissed, or laughed off. I am too tired to continue bringing them up by myself.

So this is the last time I'll say it. I am done.

Job Description (Unpaid, Unchosen):

Requirements: Absorb generational trauma, mediate emotional outbursts, keep siblings safe, be both invisible and perfect.

Compensation: Guilt, blame, and the illusion of respect.

Opportunities for Growth: Burnout, but make it character-building.

Exit Clause: None (until now).

Section I. Accountability

I've asked on various occasions for the adults in the family to act like it. Step up and take some responsibility. By this, I mean to include practically everything, including but not limited to your:

• Emotional explosions
• Neglectful parenting
• Refusal to see things from your children’s perspective
• Obsession with upholding the same impossible standards that were weaponized against you in the past

What a great family legacy!

I've been the golden child one moment and the black sheep the next, and it's giving me a whiplash. It's getting old If your only method of survival is blaming the ones closest to you, you can no longer be my guest.

You're welcome to do this without me.

Section II. Breaking Cycles

I never asked for the raise of family therapist. But at ten, I understood that if I didn’t step up, no one would. I stepped up to a position overnight that adults become qualified for after studying for roughly eight years.

I did what I thought I had to do: I grew up.

And you let me

I became the fixer, the feeler, the emotional bomb defuser. And fourteen years later, here I am, with a professional certification course on How to Build a Career Out of Understanding the Pain Your Family Forever Pretends Doesn't Exist. Oh, you think the title is not catchy enough?

Marketing is above my pay grade.

You are welcome to absolutely stop seeing my work as a 'waste of time' or something that 'brings our family shame' starting yesterday.

I went into the social services field, probably in hopes of fixing everything in the world that's broken, thanks to what you have (not) built here.

Emotional intelligence? Forget it. Let's go yell at the TV some more!

Empathy? Wow, I must be so selfish for having depression and suicidal thoughts, since it's obviously a direct jab at you, not a mental illness!

Just imagine, for a second, a scenario where people are embarrassed of a daughter who has fought tooth and nail to be her best self for the future of her family.

You're very twisted for thinking that compassion and boundaries are insults to our culture. My ability to feel these emotions proves that I love this family enough to stop the harm. You should try it sometime.

I do not want to hear for a second that I got sucked into the Western ideals and am now denouncing my family. On the contrary. Thanks to my love and respect for family, I have grown and matured to be a person worthy of loving and raising a family one day.

It is something to be resented, that you have not made the conscious decision to become better people for the sake of your children. I am not the one who failed the family. You are.

Want to get into specifics?

Sure thing!

Section III. Mental Health

Let’s talk facts. For 22 years, I struggled in virtually every area of my life. My face burned in shame, so often hearing the words lazy, disorganized, sensitive, overdramatic, and messy that I started using these words to describe myself.

Until I finally took myself into a doctor's office and heard the words: ADHD.

I got that diagnosis alone. Paid for my meds alone. Fought for my stability alone.

Yet, you not only still refuse to be supportive, but act like I should treat it as a blessing that you no longer consider it a failure that I have less dopamine in my brain, compared to the average person. The doctor's word cannot rise above a family's know-it-all nature. Did I join a cult, or is my brain hindering my ability to perform basic tasks, to the point of needed psychiatric intervention through drugs?

Sorry. I don't know why I even bother asking.

Let me be clear that I don't want to hear any criticism about not being empowered. This thing you do always do where you accuse me of feeling broken and tied down from my diagnosis has got to stop. I am so fucking empowered, let me tell you, that I am able to admit when I cannot do something. That is not something I learned from you!

I look forward to teaching myself further, but first, I must unlearn everything from you.

And to make matters worse, not only did you neglect my mental health to the point where I now have to pick up my own broken pieces as a completely burnt out young adult, but you now refuse to get my brother tested for the same problems. One would think you would have learned from your previous mistakes, and understood the signs, but my experience with you has taught me otherwise.

Don't you dare apologize to me, saying you feel guilty about not knowing any better at the time, only to then withhold the care he needs!

I never held your ignorance against you, until it was willful.

IV. On Misplaced Pride, Empty Apologies

Even after one of you nearly got admitted into a psychiatric hospital for being in such a dangerous mental state that you could have done serious harm to yourself, even then, you managed to find a way to make it about pride, appearances, and money.

Saying things like, “We don’t air our dirty laundry," is mistaking shame for strength.

What are you really teaching us? Have you ever even thought about how your actions directly influence everything about who we are becoming?

That was the moment you truly failed me.

Correction: that was the moment you truly failed all of us.

When you refused to get help. Even if it meant ruining everything we had built as a family. Even if it meant having to pull down all of us. I had spent a decade, trying to pull myself together, to be the perfect daughter, to never be in the way of anything that could possibly go wrong.

And what have you done to thank me? You went off your meds like they were a juice cleanse. You centered your whole life right back around how to exploit others and take their money—the same hustle that hollowed you out in the first place.

You have not helped me in any way other than tell me all the ways I'm doing things wrong.

When I call your mother, because I must, no matter how much she sucks out our collective souls, do you know what she says? That she wants me to smile more. That she prefers that I write happy things. That I don't suffer. That is not a good thing. Not because it is painful to see me in pain. No. It's because it looks bad. Because you don't know how to deal with your pain.

Ignoring it, though it's how all of you were raised, only makes the pain fester and get passed on. I'm furious you did that to me, and expect me to do the same numbing and pretending. But you should be ashamed of this.

You don't even know how to grieve!

I learned it when I was ten. Fifty years ahead of you and counting.

It was an ordinary day, watching you fold laundry, and realizing you were never going to be that idealized person I needed. That person only lived in my head. And having to let that imaginary part of you go.

You did that.

You made me grow up when I was still a child.

Section V. Liberation

You're repeating the same mistakes with my little siblings.

I see them the way they slam doors, shrink themselves, and stuff down all their feelings so there's room for yours.

So yeah, I’m wrecked with guilt for leaving. My stomach knots when I think about what they’re learning from you.

I cry into my pillow, hoping one day they’ll know I didn’t abandon them, but escaped so they’d have somewhere safe to run.

But I resign.

From parenting the parents.

From emotional martyrdom disguised as love.

From a role I was never meant to fill.

I am not your mother, I am not your therapist, and my accomplishments do not belong to you.

Whatever shine I have left belongs to me.

PS: I left the keys to this role on the kitchen counter. Right next to all the apologies you never gave.