The Day Everything Changed Garvita Malik   © Copyright 2026 by Garvita Malik

Photo by Frank Alarcon on Unsplash

I was in school, knowing my mother had been admitted to the hospital for 4 days, and in recess, my class teacher came up to me and said, ‘Garvita, you are now a big sister of your small brother’, and she showed me a photo my mom had sent of my brother in a hospital tray, and my first reaction wasn’t wow! Or yay! Was it ‘Ugh? Is.....this my brother?’ I, being a 7-year-old, thought babies were born beautiful like the YouTube videos, not like.....this, his hair was stuck on his forehead, and his face had a weird expression on it, and I had mentally said ‘He isn’t beautiful’ but ofc after my teacher left suddenly, I was over the seventh heaven and impatient to go to see him and my mom.

In the dispersal, my dad came to pick me up, and I went to see my mom and my younger brother. I reached my mom’s room, hugged her, and asked ‘Where is brother? She told me that he was under supervision, and I went with my dad to see him. In the supervision room.

I was shaking from happiness and as I sanitised my hand and entered the supervision room where my brother was I looked at my father who was with me and then at the nurse present there, They both nodded and it took my whole courage to touch the person for whom I had been praying and as I touched his hand with my finger.....his fingers wrapped around my index finger and it was one of the best feelings that I have experienced till now.

Later, my brother was welcomed home grandly, and he was given the name ‘Jay’. Everything was great except the sudden shift of attention that impacted me more than I knew. I had been a single child of my parents and didn’t have many cousins either, so mostly everyone wanted to play with me, talk to me and sit with me, but as my brother arrived in the home, everything shifted, everybody was behaving like I was no longer there in the room.

I felt abandoned by my own relatives who once always brought me gifts, On the name giving ceremony of my brother I was happiest as everyone was coming and I had expected gifts and love but all I got was a robot that my aunt brought for me, and she was the only person who brought me a gift while everyone else just forgot about me, I even asked my maternal grandpa ‘Grandpa! Grandpa! Where is my......gift?’ and he replied ‘Oh.....I brought money for you...buy something with it’ and this has been said to a 7-year-old who knows nothing about money and has her world in toys.

The ceremony ended, and as months passed by, visitors decreased, and now it was just my brother, my parents, and me. I never hated or never got jealous of my brother, which is strange because anyone would be, but I wasn’t, instead I was disappointed with the elders that they had not acted maturely and forgot about me. Having a brother changed everything and on the ceremony my uncle told me teasing looking at my situation ‘Now they all including your parents won’t love you as they now love your brother only, see no one even brought gifts for you’ and that hit me so hard that I cried whole day and everyone was with my brother while my father and mother were telling my uncle to stop and calming me down, but I was hit by this because I had been very possessive about my parents, I never liked even as a joke when someone told me teasingly ‘Your parents are my parents now’ I was really fixed that I will never share my parents with anyone.

My parents did their best to never make me feel left out but there were times when my mom was feeding my brother with her hands while I just sat parallel to them and watched them while internally I was also wanting to experience that same thing but I was ‘too mature for my age’ and kept brushing that thought by telling myself ‘don’t be a burden to your parents’.

There were Sunday mornings when I cried with my head inside my pillow silently as the thing said by my uncle kept repeating in my mind, and my father would often calm me down, tell me soothing words, but they weren’t as strong as my fear of being abandoned by my own parents.

Years have passed now and I still look back and pity myself, as I was a child who had everything whole then she was suddenly asked to share everything as she just turned ‘a big sister’ overnight and as a kid myself back then I feel so bad that the elders always told me to keep adjusting, keep sacrificing my own wishes as ‘being a big sister meant responsibilities’, You are giving the word ‘responsibilities’ to a 7-8 year old girl who is just trying to digest that she isn’t the ‘main character’ now. If I were and my younger self were standing face to face today, I would have hugged her, and I know myself too well that my younger self would have cried into my arms, telling all the complaints and wishes she never told anyone, just because she didn’t want to be a burden on her parents. That phrase was heaven in the day and hell at night, and the time when I was alone.

This phrase shaped me into someone who now refuses to adjust, is very stubborn and always keeps asking for hugs from her parents. There is still a part of me trying to comfort myself with my parents’ love. I felt like I had no one on my side in that year, and as I tell my parents about this today, they also agree, as after my brother’s birth, he got seriously ill, and they were only focused on him and temporarily forgot about me, as they knew that ‘she will handle herself, she understands us’. I love my parents, and they never said anything to me regarding my brother and me, but it was my relatives, especially my uncle, whose words broke me completely.