For my whole life, I have always been the “little brother."

I am the youngest of four in my family. I have two sisters, aged 28 and 25, and a brother who is 24. I am 21. This means that by definition, I am the "hand me down child." The house my parents bought has three children's bedrooms, so I shared my bedroom with my brother for the majority of my childhood.

Eventually I couldn’t take living in the same bedroom so I “moved out." By that I mean that I slept on a couch for a few months. At least until my sister went away to college. Then I moved into her room complete with cheetah print furniture and a pink stripe painted around the upper base of the wall. Of course I didn’t complain because I was just happy to have my own bedroom.

It was nice for a while, that is until my sister would come back from college to stay at home for winter and summer vacations. Then I would have to move into my unfinished basement. My room was just a cornered off section in the basement complete with hanging blankets as walls. I slept right next to the air conditioning unit which sounded like an airplane taking off right next to me. Every so often I would wake up to itchy spider bites on my arms and legs. Eventually, my sister moved out to live in her own place and I no longer had to move back and forth between the basement and her room.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that in my family I always got the short end of the stick.

But for some reason I’ve never fought against the situations I always found myself in. I think that I’ve become stronger because of it. For instance, a pattern I’ve noticed in everyone in my family is that they always asked me to do favors for them and I usually agreed to do them. They’re typically smaller favors, but I have always been the "go to kid" for achieving them. For me, I never had anyone younger than me that I could have do favors for me. In fact, it never even occurred to me to ask anyone to do any simple tasks, it’s just that if I want something to happen then I have to be the one to do it.

This has been both a gift and a curse for me. On one side, I have become very self-reliant and I usually don’t need the help of others. On the other side, when I do need help I become uncomfortable with asking for help. In some cases this affects me strongest when I’m struggling with school work or if I’m dealing with stresses in my life that I don’t know how to resolve.

Being the youngest can be a tough role to play. It has its benefits but it also has downfalls. If I could change it though I wouldn’t because it made me into the person that I am today, and I love myself. I am stronger and more tolerant because of my past. I hope this article helps those older siblings to understand that being the youngest sibling isn’t easy.