Hi, sorry if this turns out to be super long, there‘s a whole lot of things that I want to vent.

I’m afraid to show any emotion. I was brought up in a way that if you cried, you were told to suck it up. I’m afraid that if I show people that I’m hurting, they will say the same and not care, so I guessed that it was better to suffer with a straight face or a smile. I’ve noticed this even more when I’m apart of emotional dances, because I can’t bear to show the other dancers what I look like when I’m vulnerable. So I guess I’m afraid of getting hurt, even though I don’t think I’ve ever really been hurt like that, but better safe than sorry.

My dad is a bit of a racist and a homophobe. He constantly makes jokes about Asian, Hispanic, or African-American people if they ever show up on tv. I remember several occasions when he mocked a person speaking Chinese, he would do that “ching chang chong ding dong” thing. My brother even does that sometimes and it’s so irritating how insensitive they can be. If there’s ever a black or Mexican person that committed a crime on the news, he might comment something along the lines of “they’re all the same” (not ever that exactly, but the meaning ends up being similar). Absolutely any time there is a gay or lesbian person on a tv show or a movie, he’ll say things describing how disgusting their lifestyle is. I specially remember that my parents were watching a movie, and a character had a daughter who was lesbian, and my dad said “...a fathers worst nightmare”, and I’m not straight, so I knew from that moment that I will never ever tell him that I also like girls. My mom doesn’t seem to care about people’s sexuality, so at least there’s that.

My mom and my grandma (on my dad’s side) both seem to think that I should be like most girls, as in that I should where makeup, dress stylishly, and be talkative. I don’t really like any of those things. I hate makeup (I only put it on for dance performances), I like dressing comfortably, and I’m not a huge fan of people. I really want to tell them that I am not, and have no desire to be like “most girls”. My mom also thinks I need to do something with my hair all the time. I like keeping it down and long, and I absolutely HATE going to the hairdresser’s. The only way she can ever get me to go is if she schedules an appointment behind my back, and it’s impossible to get her to cancel it. My mom pressured me into letting the hairdresser make my hair more blonde (which I didn’t mind as much), and get a face-framing cut (which I hated, but I didn’t tell her).

It’s also extremely obvious that my brother is the favorite child. He joined the marines right after high school and got out and came home after four years. During his service my parents set up a little “shrine” of his pictures, the Marine’s Hymn, and a miniature marine flag. There are pictures of him everywhere. My dad constantly tells him how proud of him he is, even though he is currently living in our basement without a job and plays video games all day every day. Meanwhile, I am getting better grades than he ever did, I got in the top band at my school (which he never did), I’m taking more opportunities, and trying to get myself more out of my comfort zone to prepare myself for life after high school. And I get that the Marines can be brutal, especially the boot camp, but it would be nice if my parents acknowledged my achievements as well. A simple and sincere “great job” would be nice.

Then there was this one time I hit a deer on the way home from a Christmas party. I had to build up my driving hours before I could get my license, so this was a good chance to do so. It was dark and it was hard to see anything even with the headlights on. Out of freaking nowhere a huge buck had its back end facing the road, and it was just standing there. Since it was so dark, no one saw it in time. I was able to slow down enough but couldn’t stop. I remember the deer’s face when it fell. I swore it looked at me in the eyes. He was able to get up and run away after, but my family’s reactions where not what I’d hoped. They ignored the fact that I was having a full blown panic attack. I couldn’t breathe and my whole body was shaking. We got out of the car to check the damages and my parents seemed amused. They kept laughing and my mom told that it was good that they were in the car for my first accident instead of being alone, which I agree with, but I wished they could’ve been more attentive to how I panicked I was, and they were a bit confused to why I was concerned more for the deer than the car. The car can be fixed, a wild deer can’t if the hit ended up killing him. And since then, my mom seems to take a liking to teasing me about it. She doesn’t seem to notice how insensitive she’s being.

Sorry this is so long, I didn’t plan for it to be like this, but thanks for reading and I hope you can understand where I’m coming from.

TL;DR, my family sucks.