Jealous of my older sister...

After thinking about it, I've realized that I am extremely jealous of my older sister. This is a very new and uncomfortable situation for me and I don't know how to get over it. I've just realized this after years of feeling this way. It seems like a very big problem and I'm unsure of how to feel about it. Anyway, my sister is 29 and I'm 17. We live in different states. She has her whole life in order while I'm struggling for air. I don't know what it is, but...she's just so together and I'm a mess. We have completely different personalities. She's outgoing and I'm shy. She's assertive and I'm scared. She's confident and I'm self-loathing. She doesn't care what people think of her and I care too much. She's waaay intelligent and I always feel stupid compared to her. In short, she's everything I wish I could be but can't.

I'm shocked that it's taken me this long to realize my burning jealousy towards her. I guess for a long time I didn't even consider that it might be jealousy. I always thought I just looked up to her, and it used to be like that. When I was little I wanted to be just like my big sis. Now I see those feelings of wanting to be like her have grown into something much bigger and uglier than I ever thought they would. Now it's a painful jealousy that sears my insides and makes me feel forever inadequate. The truth is that my sister is better than me in every possible way. She has so many wonderful things that I won't ever get to experience in my life; straight hair, big breasts, a man who loves her, friends, a social life. I am a loser compared to her. Every time I think of her it's a kick in the teeth. She is the pretty sister, the smart sister, the sister who has it all figured out, and I'm just...me. Which will never add up.

Jealousy is such a tricky feeling. It really doesn't matter how well-off your sister is. Usually, if you felt better about yourself in general, you'd be happy for your sister rather than resentful or jealous. So the big question isn't "why does your sister have what you'll never have?" it's "what has lead to you feeling that you'll never have what you want?"

Really, it's ok to be jealous of her. It's not your fault. You feel terrible about yourself, and her successes are making your wounds viewable to you. That's actually a good thing because it means you get to see and work to resolve those wounds!

It's not so much about what you feel your sister has, but what do you feel you don't have?

Well, yeah, I can definitely see how this would be more about my own insecurities. I've never felt good about myself even once in my life. I want to be happy for my sister because she deserves the good things in her life, but I can't bring myself to feel this way without feeling horribly jealous, because the fact is that I have none of the good things she has. And I know I probably never will.

I know for sure that I will never have her looks. She's always been much prettier than me, although she denies it. She has a shapely body, where I'm just plain fat and would be skinny and underdeveloped as a 12 year old if I lost the weight. She has straight hair, which I've always coveted, as mine is curly, unruly, and highly unattractive (I can't straighten it either because then it gets frizzy). She has big, bright eyes, while mine are small and squinty and a flat, diminished-looking dark blue color. She has big full lips while mine are thin and dry out easily. She's also naturally tan because she comes from a different father who was like that. My father is pale, so I'm all washed-out and my skin won't keep a tan no matter how long I'm in the sun. My sister would deny it if I said this to her (she's always been nice) but the truth is that I'm freak show ugly compared to her. The only thing we have in common that might be considered unattractive is that we both wear glasses.

And that's only coming from the looks department. I still haven't mentioned how much more well-rounded she is than me in other ways. For example, she's happily married, which I will never get to experience in my life because I'm too ugly for love. No one will ever love me the way she and her husband love each other. I would be lucky to even keep someone as ugly as me because it's different when you're an ugly girl, plus no one in my generation gives a rat's *** about personality. So, that basically ****s me over for life. And also, she is probably the smartest person in my family besides my mom. She knows how to do practically everything, and if she doesn't know how to do it then she could figure it out pretty fast. It wouldn't take her long. Meanwhile, I'm clumsy and slow and have a hard time even understanding the most simple directions. You know, my lack of good looks wouldn't bother me so much if I could say something like, "Oh, well at least I have my intelligence". But I can't even say that much for myself. Basically, anything I can do, she can do 10x better.

It's just really painful when you can never be enough.

Wow, thank you for sharing all of that. It must have taken a lot of courage! You see yourself soooo darkly. It's true what they say, that we have no greater critic than ourselves. I'm an older man, so you may not take my words, but the emphasis on looks has nothing to do with your generation. It's largely about your age, unfortunately. High school especially is just a cesspool of bitter shallowness. Teenagers usually don't know how to value emotions or personalities yet because those are such complex things to evaluate. College age is where people really start to value things other than looks, because looks are such a temporary and fleeting thing.

And what's worse, you're comparing yourself to someone who's 29, so of course she more well-developed and intelligent, she's had more than a decade of experience to grow from. 17 isn't the prime of our lives, we're still just developing then. Be patient with yourself and take this time to learn and grow.

On top of all this, I feel it may be important to find a therapist. Self-esteem this low has likely been caused by something that can be resolved. You need support an caring from people around you. You'll get that here from us of course, but you need people in your life you can count on as well. A therapist can help you build that vital support system.

I fear these words mean little when you feel this way, and I can easily understand as I felt so similar when I was your age. And I'm not saying that it's just a phase or just your age. I'm just saying that it's not fair to yourself to compare yourself to someone who is so much father in their life's journey.

Please share more,k and I'll offer whatever support I can. I feel for you.

Hi again, and thank you for replying back.

I agree with what you said about us being our own worst critics. I'm probably the very definition of that, because I've been bullied and put-down and harassed for most of my life, and still I would say I'm the one who treats me worse than everyone. It's all I know. My self-esteem has always been very low. I've never felt good about myself even once in my life. I just have no idea how to get to that place, besides the fact that I wouldn't even know what it feels like to love and accept yourself. That kind of thing has always been outside of my reach. The reason I see myself so darkly is because all my life I have been told repeatedly that I'm fat and ugly and stupid and other bad things; by people my age, hell, even by adults, though mostly by society in general. And it's gotten to the point where I've heard it so much that I can't bring myself to believe otherwise. I just can't see why I should love myself when all the things they say about me (fat, dumb, ugly) are actually true. Because they are. I am fat and ugly and stupid, or at least that's what I see when I look in the mirror everyday. And that's what other people see in me.

I know it's unrealistic to compare myself with someone who's 29, but I can't seem to help it. I've always compared myself to my older sister. It's like I said in my other post, even when I was little I wanted to be just like my big sis. The fact that I will never measure up to her is so searingly painful inside that I could made myself sad to the point of crying if I thought about it long enough. I know it's only natural that she would be so much better than me because of her being older, but it doesn't hurt any less knowing that I will always be less than her, that I will never experience the love she has, that I will always be the ugly little sister. As far as my still developing goes, I'm basically done growing. I've been the same size for 3 years now. The body I have is the body I'm stuck with, and it will never be as attractive as hers. Men will never lust after me the way the do her, guys won't even look at me. It's true that most people my age are very shallow and focused on looks, and yeah, most will grow out of that. But I just feel like society as a whole is becoming more and more looks-focused which makes me feel like I don't stand a chance in life.

As far as getting a therapist goes...I really can't do that at the moment.

I used to be jealous of people around, but I realized I am my own worst critic, quite frankly I don't know how I did it. Right now, I don't think I'd rather look like anyone else or be anyone else, but sometimes I do get jealous, it just doesn't last too long.

As for society, it is quite shallow, there are just too many people, and you simply don't have the time to learn everyone's personality (really get to know them) before you can judge them, so people simply do the best they can with what little time they can spend with a person, and they're quite eager to judge, so if that means judging someone just on appearance (as appearance is the first most obvious thing), so be it. I hate what the world has become, but it's the truth.

What kind of people have you surrounded yourself with, by the way? sometimes we have no choice, we don't get to choose the people around us, family, friends, but I think they're pretty shallow, awful people that have told you you're fat and ugly all your life. More likely, it is them who are ugly, if not in body, then in mind, and they want to hurt you, so they can feel good about themselves.

I am depressed, I can look pretty bad, but that's because I'm not taking good care of my appearance, I'm too down all the time to care about how I look, I just waltz out of bed, and the next thing I know, I'm in school, while all the other kids I know spend 30 minutes just to get ready and look their best. When you have low self esteem, you will only focus on the few 'faults' that you think you have and ignore the many positives about you.

I agree with brokenentity, definitely. And something you said, "The reason I see myself so darkly is because all my life I have been told repeatedly that I'm fat and ugly and stupid and other bad things; by people my age, hell, even by adults, though mostly by society in general." This is huge. This isn't right, and you don't deserve that at all.

The world does become less cruel after high school, HS is always the worst, so I still feel it's important to stick it out as sometimes that's all we can do to survive. But on top of that, it's important to not take on what others say about us. I know that's much easier said than done, but you're human, if there's one thing humans are good at, it's survival. And the part of you that needs to survive knows that you can't possibly be quite as bad as you feel, or else you wouldn't be here on this forum looking for support.

Trust that instinct. You've been fed horrible lies your whole life about your supposed inadequacy. Our society does hold certain kinds of beauty up on a pedestal, gleaming and golden, for all women and men to know what they can never attain... but it's simply false that that's the greater beauty. You are unique, rarer than any jewel in the world, and far more beautiful because of that. I know you don't feel that way, but that is the real truth as opposed to the lies you've been confronted with daily. I know it's hard, seems impossible even, but hold on to that slight glimmer of truth that lies beneath rather than the layers and layers of sludge society has thrown onto you (if you wee to be compared to a jewel ).

Someone else brought up loving ourselves on this forum, not knowing how to do such a thing. That poster, I believe, eventually commented that they had determined (after receiving our support) that loving themselves must start with simply taking care of themselves. Not because they feel they are wonderful or beautiful or special, but because they know that they must. Don't simply follow your feelings, because those have been taught to lie to you the same way everyone else has. And trust the support you receive here.

Mainly the only people I'm surrounded with right now are my parents.
I dropped out of school in March because of all the mistreatment. I plan on finishing high school online.
I don't have any friends or anything. Nobody really wants to be friends with the fat ugly girl, or that's how they see it. Now I mainly stay home because it's a small town and there's nowhere to go and I have no one to go with anyway.

My parents are kind of indifferent about the whole insecurity thing.

I don't give advise so I will just write about what happened in my family.
OUR PARENTS WERE THE PROBLEM!
As a little kid, in awe of our parents, I would never have seen this nor figured it out. My relationship with my older brother was doomed from the beginning because our very ignorant parents FAILED to mentally prepare him to lovingly accept me from day one of my life and then, after I arrived, they further FAILED to train him to happily accept me as his beloved brother and friend instead of an unwelcome, unwanted and much HATED INVADER & threatening enemy of his. As soon as he decided that I was his enemy, he savagely punished me from then on while I innocently loved and respected him since I had no reason to resent him like he did me.
OUR PARENTS further made things worse by allowing him to brutally punish and abuse me for many years WITHOUT either protecting me or encouraging him to treat me better. I now believe that they thought we were real FUNNY in our innocent and non-damaging toddler skirmishes over toys and attention.
So the unhappy and unhealthy relationship between my brother and I was all a sad and direct consequence of VERY BAD PARENTING.
Then, when our little sister was born about 4 years after me, all the resentment, hate, jealousy and bitterness started up again but in our sister's case, we did not DARE abuse her or dad would have MURDERED us since she was his precious favorite.
OUR PARENTS WERE THE PROBLEM from day one and it stayed like that until we were in our mid-teens. Fortunately for us kids, we did finally develop some respect for each other but we never did become good friends to this day all because our rotten parents would not allow it and none of us, except me, has done any family or emotional work to undo the damages our stupid parents did to us back then and replace it with normal sibling love and respect. I don't expect my siblings will ever see what our parents did to us so I guess we will just be polite, distant and cool siblings from now on! It sucks!
good luck,
jim