My mom said, “You’re too successful. It makes your brother feel bad.” So, I made him feel bad again by succeeding even more. She wanted me to fail by making false accusations about me to my boss, but it backfired.
Hey, Reddit. So, my mom literally told me I was too successful and that it made my younger brother feel bad about himself. Then, when I didn’t dial it back like some kind of apologetic robot, she tried to tank my career by calling my boss with madeup accusations. Spoiler alert, it didn’t go how she planned.
I’m a 28-year-old guy working as a senior financial analyst for a midsized pharmaceutical company. Nothing crazy fancy, but I worked my way up from being a junior analyst straight out of college. My younger brother, Nathan, 25 male, is well… he exists. That’s about the most impressive thing I can say about him without lying.
Let me paint you a picture of how things have always been in my family. I’m the oldest kid. From day one, I was expected to be responsible, mature, and basically raise myself while my parents focused all their energy on Nathan—the golden child, the baby, the one who could do no wrong, even when he was actively doing wrong.
When we were kids, I’d get yelled at for leaving toys on the floor. Nathan would trash the entire living room, and my parents would just smile and say he was being creative.
I had chores starting at age seven. Nathan didn’t start doing chores until he was like 15.
Birthdays were a joke. I’d get practical stuff—clothes I needed for school, a new backpack. Nathan would get the new gaming console, expensive sneakers, concert tickets. One year, I got a graphing calculator for my birthday. I was 14. Nathan got a dirt bike for his 12th birthday.
But you know what? I learned to stop caring about the unfairness. I just put my head down and focused on what I could control. Studied hard, got good grades, worked part-time jobs starting at 16, saved every penny.
My parents never helped me financially after I turned 18. Not with college, not with my first apartment, nothing. Meanwhile, Nathan got his tuition paid for, got a car handed to him, got his rent covered while he was in college.
Speaking of college, I went to a solid state school on a partial academic scholarship I earned myself. Worked 20 hours a week, graduated in four years with a degree in finance and a 3.7 GPA.
The story doesn’t end here –
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