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⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆Est. November 2022⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ⋆⁺₊⋆Porter Luxury Apartments, Chicago IL⋆⁺₊⋆ ⋆⁺₊⋆
An Individuality Complex—can be defined as feeling an excessive or overwhelming need to assert one's unique personality and reject conformity. This phenomenon can cause behaviors like perfectionism, difficulty maintaining relationships, and isolation.
It's not a widely recognized term in psychology—in fact, people go back and forth on whether it exists or not all the time. The usual argument is that it isn't really grounded in research, lacks any empirical basis or clarity, and is too vague to be acknowledged as a real term.
However, just by meeting Ciyana, it would soon become clear that you didn't need to be a doctor or rocket scientist to see it in her. Her actions spoke for themselves.
Whether that was a good or bad thing was subjective.
It seemed only natural when you spent 24 years living in the shadow as the fraternal triplet to her two identical siblings. Siblings that, honestly, looked just like her either way.
They all had very similar, soft facial structures and features reminiscent of their father, and the same freckles sprinkled across their noses and cheeks thanks to their mother.
The only real difference worth mentioning between the three was that her brother and sister had fairly lighter eyes and complexions than hers. That differentiation still wasn't significant, which is why she couldn't, for the life of her, understand why people kept mentioning it.
If it wasn't her family, it was people at school or even strangers in public. It was never explicitly stated that she was any less than them. But how was she meant to feel when they gushed about how beautiful and handsome her brother and sister were—how their parents needed to get them into modeling agencies ASAP—mistaking them for twins while she simply stood there?
As you might imagine, this led to years of her feeling inadequate in comparison. She didn't think she was ugly per se, but rather just... regular, ordinary, nothing special. It may not sound like much, but when only your siblings—two thirds of you—are constantly seen as extraordinary and unique, it only became more and more devastating.
Her way of coping as a child consisted of doing anything she could to be seen in a different light from her siblings. For instance, her favorite color was pink, but since that was also her sister Aiyana's favorite, she forced herself to like blue.
She threw temper tantrums whenever her mother insisted that the three of them wear matching or coordinated outfits, insisting that she be allowed to choose her own clothes. Though her mother never understood what she was going through since Ciyana was too young to express it, she didn't have the patience to do anything else but cave.
