Look, I know you’re not really listening right now—or ever, really.  When I talk to you, you’re looking back through a glass bead.  To you my intentions are clear and my core is fragile, but I’m afraid your truth is a hallucination.  I’ve been molded to be afraid to speak, afraid to tell you that I don’t want to live like this. I’ve lived as a filial daughter, though this emotion has always been boiling deep within my soul.

So now I think it’s time to speak up, and because I’m entitled to nothing, I have nothing to lose.

 I’m sorry that your daughter isn’t what you wanted her to be.  I’m sorry she can’t seem to do anything right or make up her mind.  She’s like this because she knows she doesn’t want to do any of it, and so she drunkenly staggers from one to the other trying to appease you.  She’s afraid to tell you that she belongs in a place far from here, and far from you.  She knows it seems mad, oh she knows.  But really, when has she ever not felt that way?  When has she not felt the walls of your standards, of society, of life constricting her?

She can’t breathe. It’s selfish.

I can’t breathe. I’m selfish.

I need air.