Lana feels

I'm home. Back in Chicago... Back in my parents' house. With my little sister, who is almost as tall as I am now. Wow. With my parents, who drive me fucking insane and it's only the third day back. With Juliette, who is actually pretty cool. But, this house. Is full of memories. Not very full, cause I only lived here a little more than a year before I left, but full enough because it has my family and all of the things. The hallways may only remind me of a few arguments, the rooms of a few more, but that kitchen table reminds me of so many. She threw me against it once, against the base, when I was maybe eight years old, so hard that I had a lump on the side of my head for a week. So yeah. The tables, chairs, beds, wall decorations. They all bring back memories. And sitting around the kitchen table last night, trying to talk to them, it just all came flooding back. And I almost lost it. Then, didn't. Cause, right at the point where she started screaming, my father started clucking, and she screamed at him to shut up and stop interfering, I realised that nothing had changed here. But that something in this picture no longer belonged. That they could go on with their lives this way as long as they wanted. But I just wasn't going to play along anymore. And I stopped. I didn't yell. I put my hands on the table and leaned forward a little, and I talked, calmly, for half an hour. And by the end of it, I may not have accomplished anything towards what I wanted, but I did something far more important. I proved to myself, and maybe even a little bit to them, that I am my own person. I am not a little girl. I am not scared of her, because she is no more than a playground bully trying to hurt others because she is hurting inside. And I am not responsible for that hurt. I didn't cause it, and I refuse to try to compensate for it. So I will stay here for the summer, because I don't have a choice. And I will do what I have to do to pull off what I want to do. Namely, get Lada here, and then get Lila and me to NY. Or, perhaps, the other way around, depending on how it works out. In any event. Get all of us to Rocky Horror for the midnight showing. And my mother doesn't need to tell me that we can't, because she's not going to know! Wondrous thing. And then, in September, I go back to school. With any luck, I go back to school still myself. Because I'm sick of being somebody else, and I am not going to do it to satisfy my parents and their dream of the perfect suburban lifestyle.