Her Blood Bought My Freedom

Summary

My parents suffered from severe, chronic anxiety.

The only catch was that their anxiety was reserved exclusively for my younger sister, Cathy.

Whenever I brought home a test score higher than hers, the house would sink into a suffocating gloom. My parents would stay up all night, pacing the hallway and sighing into the dark, terrified that my success would crush Cathy’s fragile self-esteem. To let them sleep, I learned how to deliberately miscalculate math problems and erase correct answers—orchestrating my grades with surgical precision just so Cathy could stay perched above me.