The outcast

By: Lizbeth Murillo Sandoval

Family is the most important thing anyone needs in their life, but when you feel like the black sheep, you feel alone. Being compared to someone makes you feel like you’re not special or like if you’re not enough. Sadly, Dyllan Tran, a freshman at Yerba Buena High School, lives day by day being compared to his older brothers.

Tran feels as if he’s unable to do anything without his parents' judgment.

He doesn’t let that keep him down for the rest of the day, though, whenever this happens, he gets stressed out. Tran says, “I talk to my friends and play games with them.”

Aside from reaching out to his friends, he also reaches out to his brother. Tran says, “I usually tell my brother what happens, or he asks me and it helps me feel better because I got it off my chest.” It’s good to know that there’s people or family who are there to help you feel better or as an escape from everything that is crumbling around you.

Whenever kids notice that their parents treat them differently than their siblings, the kids start to get that mindset of them thinking that they’re not good enough. Parents have such high expectations towards their kids at such a young age.

Tran says, “I want them to treat me as an independent teenager. They don’t think I’m able to make my own decisions and that I can’t be responsible.” He wants to be treated equally as his other siblings. He wants his parents to give him a chance to prove himself to them.

He is scared to reach out because he feels as if his parents wouldn’t understand him. He thinks that if he does try to talk to them, they would try to fix the problem by using what they learned when they were younger.