I grew up in a unique family...extended family, thanks to my father's wayward ways when he was younger. I am the youngest of six children. The four oldest children are by my father's first wife. The fifth child is by a girlfriend, and finally there is me, and I am by his second wife. I love all my brothers and sisters to no end and they seem to love me too, except for the fifth child... my sister.

She resents my father terribly for his "abandonment" and takes her resentment out on the rest of us. She fails to realize that like her, I'm an outsider too. My first two sisters and two brothers all have the same mother and father and grew up together. They have a bond between them that I could never have, though I do try to fit in and believe that I have established a "place" in their lives. But the 5th child has cast me aside along with the rest. She never let's any of us forget that she has had a great life without us and doesn't need us and that we are beneath her. why is this? She is so proud of the father that raised her and tries to persuade us that he is ten times a better father than ours, yet we love our father dearly and understand why he didn't stay with her mother in the first place... a story that she refuses to hear.

She came to DC to visit me, my sister, and my brother and in the end, she and my sister ended up in a terrible argument, at the end of which she disowned all of us... except my brother. I don't understand. I have never done anything to her but try to gain her love and I am always cast aside. She and I took a cruise together last year with some of her friends, and I was flattered, only to have her tell me that none of her friends know that I'm her sister and I am not to tell them. I was kind of hurt.

I don't feel that this situation will ever improve and I feel that I must view it as something that I must let go. My sister does not love me. She does not love any of us. She thinks that we are inferior to her and I know that she will never accept us. It's a really harsh reality, one that I has taken time to adjust to, but I must. I only wish that it could be different because I love her... even if she doesn't love me.

Learn more about this author, Arielle Crowell.
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