Does anyone else feel like they lack a clear identity and personality compared to a more favored sibling?
I'm hesitant to call myself the scapegoat and my sister the golden child because sometimes I think the roles between us switched depending on the situation or stages in our lives. My sister did have a lot of problems because of my parents' (particularly my father's) expectations and treatment of her. However, my parents always spoke of her with great reverence and it's also easy to mention a lot of things about her personality, her interests, her likes and dislikes, etc. Growing up, my dad always talked to me about how she used to be an overachiever and was so highly intelligent that she was in Mensa, and since childhood, I always felt really small in comparison, like I could never live up to that. She passed away in 2007 and my dad is still grieving her loss to the point of not taking care of himself at all, and he's now at a point where he has to go to the hospital on a frequent basis. He still always talks about losing her, how he feels like a failure, etc. I try to be compassionate with him because obviously it is awful losing a loved one and really awful to lose a child, and I also feel like there's a big piece missing in our lives, but my dad sometimes gets to a point where it gets to be way too much.
On the other hand, when it comes to me, I just feel sort of like...a lump, I guess. My parents know some things about me, like my interests and what I like/dislike. But I honestly don't know what they'd say about me if you asked them to describe me, and I feel like if they did come up with something, it probably would be less than flattering.
I don't have a big in-person friend group like my sister did (most of my own friends nowadays are online), and the other friends that I do have are people who knew my sister (and I think my sister had them promise to keep an eye on me in case something happened) or neighbors whom I don't really spend any time with but occasionally talk to on my daily walks. A lot of times, I feel like both my parents and some of my sister's friends see me as a placeholder for my sister, not realizing that I may not be 100% into the kind of things she was or would be into, and it kind of messes with my head. My dad's one friend even told me that I basically am taking on the role of 2 daughters, which is why my parents get super worried and overreact to the idea of me doing things on my own. I'm quiet and introverted, and I spend most of my time in my bedroom. My sister had a stronger personality than I did and was more daring. I sort of feel like a "non-person", for lack of a better word.
I was wondering if anyone else had any similar feelings and how they deal with them, or if there was any sort of name for this phenomenon.