I am the eldest of three, and from fairly early on, certainly by the time I was in my teens, I became the sibling who handled things, translating for my parents at appointments since I spoke English most fluently, managing my younger siblings when our parents were busy working, generally being the one everyone assumed would simply take care of whatever actually needed handling at any given moment.
That pattern has genuinely continued into full adulthood now. When our father had a health scare last year, I coordinated everything, doctors, insurance, informing extended family, while my two younger siblings offered help but ultimately left most of the actual coordination to me by default, as though it was simply understood between all of us that this specific role was mine to carry regardless of the situation.
I do not think either of them are being intentionally lazy or careless about it exactly, more that the pattern was established so early and so thoroughly that none of us ever really questioned it directly or considered an actual alternative arrangement seriously. But I am genuinely tired now, and a real resentment has been quietly building for a while that I have not fully expressed to either of them directly yet in any real conversation.
Tried gently mentioning once that I could genuinely use more actual help managing things going forward, and got a fairly vague we are here for you kind of response that, in practice, has not actually changed much of anything meaningfully since that specific conversation happened.
Part of me wonders if I am partly responsible for this too, having stepped up so readily and so consistently for so many years that neither of them ever really needed to develop the same specific habit of stepping up themselves in the first place.
Has anyone else been the consistently responsible sibling growing up, and did you find an actual way to redistribute that responsibility later on as adults, or does that specific early pattern just tend to stick permanently once it gets established that early?