Emma That is Dead (FREE!)

Chapter Seventeen

Emma's Journal Entry

November 12

Today's assignment: Write about something in your life you wish you could change.

Something I wish I could change? I suppose I could feed you some bullshit about how I wouldn't change a thing. That everything I've experienced has made me the person I am today.

But I'm not going to lie.

Everyone wishes they could change something. Their weight, how smart they are, wishing they were more beautiful or a better athlete. Maybe they'd like more friends. If I had the ability, there's a lot I'd make different. Not so much with myself—I'm learning to accept who I am. I'm even starting to like it. But I'd change my circumstances. I'd change how people treat me. How they treat others. I'd change fucking society, and the negative impact it has on everyone in it.

All this talk about acceptance, and how everyone is equal, except the majority of people haven't gotten that memo. Or maybe they just don't give a shit. There is so much judgement in the world, even by the people who claim to love you.

Sometimes, I think the ones who say they love you are the worst offenders of all. Take my parents, for example. They work all the damn time and I've practically raised myself, yet they still think they can tell me what to do—as if they've earned the right. If they care so much, why aren't they ever home? All they're concerned about are my grades, who I'm friends with, what extracurricular activities I'm involved in.

Do you know they have never once asked if I liked playing soccer? They signed me up for the preschool program when I was three, and every year since they've made sure I have the best of everything I'll need. Clothes to practice in, name brand cleats, the most exclusive soccer camps money can buy. And for what? So I can rise to the top of a sport they don't even care if I enjoy?

And college: the education I'll need to study the career I'd most like to have. The one I'll be working in for the next forty-some years of my life. Do they care what subjects interest me? No. Not even when I explained how important psychology is, and how therapists help people every day. They didn't want to hear it. Yet they had no problem going on and on about the fields they thought I should go into, no matter how I felt about them. I don't want to be an engineer, or go into finance. I don't want to be some big-shot CEO. I want to do what I want to do, not what they tell me I should. "Your grandfather didn't come to this country and work his hands to the bone just for us to throw it away on nonsense!"

Seriously, if I hear that one more time...

I don't feel like I can talk to them. Not only about college or soccer, but anything. Everything. They don't even know me. Not the real me. The Emma they see is the one I let them see. Because if I confessed how I really feel, laid everything on the line, they'd probably disown me.

That's why I can't trust them. They wouldn't understand. I represent our family and God forbid I live a life they don't approve of. What in the world would people say?!

My parents have everything, but there's no warmth. Nothing affectionate or sentimental, not even with each other. Sometimes, I'm afraid they've passed their poison on to me.

But I don't want to be like them. I want to be happy.

So fuck their superiority and discriminating ways. I don't give a shit anymore. Maybe I should just forget about them and do what I want to do for a change? Stop complaining and take action. Because no matter how I play it, someone's going to be miserable.

Why the hell does it have to be me?