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One of the most important things that I learned when seeing my younger sister grow up is that whatever our genes are, they sure as hell ain't consistent. My tastebuds were made pickier at a young age to the point I often teetered with malnourishment, her ears were tuned more sensitively than mine to the point she needs earmuffs to function during school. Apart from our knack for drawing(more on her side, she's already where I was in middle school at not yet 8 years old) and inability to focus on schoolwork, we're two different creatures.
An thing that happens often is that we can't tell whether she's genuinely suffering through something(as was the case at my cousin's sweet 16 where she was made to endure music you could feel in your chest in a closed party hall for over 10-20 minutes, my mother later justifying it at "not wanting to ruin their special moment" even though she kept her there long after the cameras stopped rolling) or just throwing a tantrum(which she undoubtedly has over other usual kid-things like toys or her tablet).
Unfortunately in recent times, it's become much easier to tell. Things she once begrudgingly tolerated has now led to her throwing full-on tantrums over. The shower she once didn't like but would do eventually has no turned into my father needing to threaten her at least 3 times just to even consider staying in the shower, and God help you if you have to brush her hair after. Even I lost my temper with her once, and I started screaming at her once we got back in the car in the supermarket. I heard my father's tone in my scream when I did it, but my anger was towards everyone in that car, a little myself. I hated it, because the only time I heard that screaming voice come out of me before was a time when I was the one who deserved to get screamed at, and I didn't realize it until after the fact.
Another reason I hate that anger is that I start to get nonsense thoughts when I feel it. "Maybe I should have been beat harder as a kid; maybe I should traumatize her and skip all the effort of change. Maybe my father should have abandoned me in 6th grade like he said he would so I got the message sooner." The fact that I even start to consider these as true for a moment shows either shows my stupidity or my damage; These periods of believing my intrusive thoughts are so common that I no longer trust myself to be the advocate for her that she needs in this household.
Our treatment aligns in this case. The exception being that the threat of being hit wouldn't happen in my childhood, it would just go straight to the hitting. Usually open-palm smacks, sometimes the belt on an off-day(the worst I ever got was being hit relatively lighter than usual with a metal broom after some mishap with my sister), but it was never a word for too long. The one that they vehemently deny though(not that they admit ever hitting me with a belt, the bastards) is the one where my father whooped me in the shower while my skin was wet so that I wouldn't keep stepping out of it from fear of being alone in the bathroom at night.
My childhood frailness and constant doctor visits seem to have only spelled trouble for my younger sister, as they hesitate taking any of her problems seriously. It took weeks of increasingly desperate fights to not go to school and calls about noise-related meltdowns in school before they finally got her tested for over-sensitive hearing and allowed her to bring the headphones to school they confiscated months prior.
I have no doubt that my parents care in some capacity, but realizing how conditional that care is from time to time(the irony of them denying they ever belted me while my mother regularly tells stories about her mother doing the same[this is not to equalize our childhoods. My mother was beat **far more severely**]) is the part that sucks.