“Why do have to be such a mistake and disappointment to everyone around you?” he screamed at me as I slipped on my nearest pair of black and white Converse chucks and headed out my door. “Why do I have to be just like you?” escaped under my breath once I felt I was at a safe distance from the back of my home. My father had this way about him where he almost believed he was comparable to a living god, and if you didn’t fit into what he thought was correct, well, you you didn’t fit in at all. And he would be the first person to let you know exactly what he thought. This time he had made it perfectly clear that he did not believe I was adequate enough to be in his world. I was his daughter, how could he be saying these things to me? What I couldn’t stay there and listen to another word of his acid-like statements that were locked on my heart. Normally I could withstand the piercing words he fired so rapidly at me, or anyone at all for that matter. But this time he had crossed a very personal barrier that I was no where near prepared for, so I did the only thing I knew how to do; I ran until my feet couldn’t carry me any further.
  The misty, semi sweet spring air engulfed me as my feet carried me faster than I could stay in pace with. Slowly the breeze dried the tears stinging my frustratingly red cheeks, and I slowed down to collect myself from the soul-shattering blow of my fathers words. Shards of my once seemingly whole self were spread all over the inside of my torso, slowly carving away the self confidence and stability I spent so long building into the fortress that was now crumbling into my stomach. I always believed that I was a strong girl but in his world I was just a small, crumpled ball of paper laying on an English 11 floor after a missed toss to the trashcan. Once I had my breath under control again, I took a moment to look around me. A dense fog had set earlier in the day and had remained lurking between the crevices of the trees, shrubs, and any open area within sight. There was no more than ten feet of visibility, the path ahead turning into a clouded mystery. There were creatures small and large scurrying about playfully, using the misty veil as a barrier to conceal their merrymaking. Birds soared overhead and I listened to their warning calls. Some sweet and patterned, calls of passion and location. Others were rapid and alarming, giving off the hints of distress or need from their pitch and resemblance to screams. I decided to sit down on a large, mossy covered cedar log just off the edge of the path and collect my thoughts.
  Out of the corner of my eye, a decent sized doe and her fawn came into view. Pleasantly smiling, I decided to watch them with curiosity until a loud thump in the background startled them off back to the way they came. Periodically wildlife would come and go, being very confident in what they were and set on what they had come to do, whether it be walking along the same paths they often used for feeding or playfully wrestling about like the way their parents and siblings had imprinted on them. I had always played in woods such as these with my little brother, which was not always the best idea. Once, when I was seven years old I had wandered out to play hide and seek with my little brother in similar conditions to these. I ran deep into the center of the woods and soon found myself lost, no idea of which way home was. However, even at seven years old I went back to using the skills my parents had equipped me with to find my way back to safety. “If you ever get lost, just look down and follow your footsteps. You’ll always be backtracking, but you’ll at least come out alive.” “Okay mom, okay! But I’m not going to get lost!”. Well, with little surprise looking back, I was wrong. I kept having to tell myself that I wasn’t lost to prevent the inner panic from setting in. Today, however, that inner panic was replaced with heartbreak and pure anger. Slowly, I came to realize what this mysterious wood was trying to tell me since the moment I had stumbled into it. Organisms are products of their environment, and the relationship between my father and I had caused me to be no exception. As much as I hated to say it, I was my father’s daughter. I have the same cocky, self-aware attitude. I had the same struggle putting a filter on my words, when my emotions started to spark up they blazed, and when faced with a situation of confrontation I had no trouble standing my ground and fighting for my side to the death. I behaved the same under pressure as my father, and sometimes that got the best of me. There was nothing I could do about that.I had always been told that I needed to be what I was told I needed to be. I had to just conform to the ways I had been placed into, yet somehow still be myself and do what I believed was right. I didn’t understand how I could be so different in a world that was so black and white. But that was just the thing; the world is not black and white. There are so many varying concepts, versions of right and wrong, and different worlds that were so far apart yet they fit so perfectly into each other. My father and I happened to be one of those great examples. He had his way of going about life, set in the ways he was raised and if anyone strayed off of the path as he saw it, they were instantly “wrong” about the way they were handling their situation at hand. But that was not the case, I was not that case. He was correct, I didn’t belong in his world. But I was not a disappointment to the world, I was a disappointment to his world. And while as he is my father, and I do have certain guidelines that I need to follow. I was following them in my own unique world where the paths were not as straight as his. The concepts were not as definite all the time and there are areas for variation that are vastly larger than what he saw in his own. But we were one and the same, in the aspect that we processed information nearly identically. What I could do, was play that piece of inevitable information to my advantage and by doing so, my relationship with my father and myself would one day be as simple as black and white. I had my own world, and I could do nothing about making my world and his coincide. What I could do, however, was make that coexistence more bearable and realize that I am more than his words. I am his daughter, and thus I am what no one can change. I am an individual, in my own world of a mess of worlds that I cannot change. I can only go along the path that was given to me and make the best out of it; I can only make the best of myself.