My mother didn’t correct any of it. She didn’t amplify it either. She simply drifted in the same direction, carried by the current my father created. Her quiet nods and soft smiles told me she wasn’t blind to the imbalance, but she also wasn’t going to disturb it. She liked harmony more than fairness. And in our house, harmony always meant making sure my brother felt special.

The expectations extended into the community, especially within the small church where my family spent most weekends. It was the kind of place where reputations stuck like labels, and my brother’s label was “the promising one.” Mine was “the quiet girl.” That was all anyone needed to know about me.

Nobody wondered who I was or what I liked. They already thought they had me figured out.

As I moved through middle school into high school, the dynamic didn’t soften the way some people assumed it might. Instead, it sharpened. The more independent I became, the more I formed my own opinions, my own interests, the more my father treated it as defiance. He liked predictability, and I wasn’t predictable anymore.