This one needed a Kleenex warning, simply and powerfully emotive....
The following nearly had me on the ropes as it is/was something shared...
The thoughts came unbidden, one after another, weighing heavy on Robby’s mind. He thought about the sacrifices his parents had made for him over the years—the late nights, the hard work, the endless encouragement to succeed. And now, all of it felt conditional, like it had come with invisible strings attached. Strings he had unknowingly severed the moment he told them the truth.
“I’ve always tried to make them proud,” he whispered to himself, his voice barely audible. “But I was never enough.”
I was the third and last of my siblings, my brother was the golden child who could do no wrong. His bipolar episodes ignored and overlooked, when they couldn't overlook, something else was always to blame. Dropping out of college, lost in the foggy haze of drugs was ignored.
My sister bonked her way thru high school, how she never became pregnant might have had something to do with the good doctor who 'assisted' young ladies in the midnight hours as they avoided an unwanted pregnancy...
Me, I was an honor roll student and the black sheep of the family, never good enough. I worked shoveling snow, mowing lawns, painting and a general dogsbody for the good doctor. With my earnings I bought my own clothes and necessities, did my darndest to avoid both of my siblings' requests for loans, having been burned before.
Yet everything I did, including putting myself thru college was never good enough. When I turned 18, I realized my life was on my shoulders and would be what I wanted to make out of it...