Have you ever wondered about how you feel about being a middle child? Well, let me tell you, it's not very fun.

It’s all fun and games until another baby comes out of your mother’s womb and you realize that you are the middle child; the alien of the family.

Being a middle child is one of the most challenging things to do. I mean, you have to keep up with two lives! It can get so confusing at times. Take it from me, I’m the middle child with an elder sister and a younger brother. Do I act old or young?

“You're too old” “You are too young” So who am I?. Do I act like a bratty little girl who begs for a new barbie doll set every week or, do I act like an 18-year-old girl who just finished school?. 

It can get so frustrating at times it’s crazy. I’m sure I'm not the only middle child who feels like this. This one time I got a thought “being the elder child is such fun because parents will be like oh my first baby and being the younger kid is so easy because parents are like oh my last baby and the middle kid? Am I just the cucumber in a sandwich that no one notices? What am I?” 

The thought “I’m not enough to be favorited by people” haunted me and it still does but guess what? As I am growing up, I am realizing that the same cucumber is what brings the crisp in a sandwich. Meaning, the middle child is also important even though it doesn’t feel like so because that kid is the best friend who makes coffee for an elder kid when she is prepping for her SATs and the best friend who helps build a fort for the younger kid of the family. 

Sometimes you feel like everyone is ganging up on you but once you overcome the fear of not being able to stand up alone, nothing can stop you. 

You may have seen multiple posts on social media explaining how the middle child is the most ignored but also the most independent kid, but it's not that way from the beginning. What I believe is that once my brother came to life, everything changed. Suddenly all the focus you got goes to someone else. That “did you eat” changed into “did your brother eat?” make me feel alone but once I got that “it is what it is'' mentality, nothing really affected me. Of course, I feel jealous sometimes because I'm just a kid but if you compare a middle child and the younger child, you’ll see the differences. 

So to end with, if you are the middle child, it won't be hard to trust me. You are expected to be two different people which will be hard and there is no way to escape it. But don’t ever feel alone and remember you are the cucumber in that sandwich. As unpleasant as that sounds, what I mean is you are as valuable as anyone else in the family. What you are in a family doesn’t make you any less or any different and obviously there will be times when it feels like your parents are picking favorites and sometimes they have to but you can’t let one incident define what you are to your own family.