I have lived my life as the eternal oxymoron, a continuous contradictory statement. The reason I say this is because I am my family’s pride and joy, as well as their problem child. I am the one my parents brag about to their friends, the girl with good grades and extracurriculars, polite, nice in public, first place in religion school for nine years.

But I am also the problem child, the perpetual black sheep of my household. I am constantly too loud, too excited, too arrogant, too proud. My parents love to criticize me, hold my flaws to a standard of their own. Every test grade too low, each award that’s not high, the fact that my body is not slim and slender; it is all nitpicked on and pointed out until I am in tears.

In the end, I have grown to realize that I am never enough for them. Never smart enough, never prayerful enough, never quiet or demure or everything they want me to be. The knives of their words have cut into me, drawing blood, leaving scars that do not paint a picture of resilience; instead, it is grotesque and ugly, slashes upon slashes left by years of pain. Sometimes, I stare at myself in the mirror, looking at the bruises of my childhood that decorate my arms; now, they have faded into too-dark patches on my skin; I call them my sunspots, but I know, deep down, with a grave sincerity that leaves me breathless, that I am only romanticizing the torture they have handed to me. 

I think the most hurtful part about all of this, however, is that the very people who rage over my faults are not perfect either. My father has a lightning temper and gluttonous pride; my mother battles with her own insecurities, placing everyone in her life on her very own measuring scale. As I grow older, I understand that they are aware of their problems, but they use me, the ever-present elder daughter, to be their scapegoat. I listen to the same endless litany, not one that belongs in churches, but one of relentless misery; the same repeat of Dad is mad because of you or I only act like this since you are the way you are. 

There are days I lie awake at night and think, what if it is my fault? What if I am the one in the wrong? That was my philosophy during my childhood years, a mantra I lived by; you’re the problem. You’re not good enough. You need to work harder. I brought home achievements, woke up when the sun rose at eleven years old, ran harder in my physical education class, so my dad wouldn’t call me fat; worked to bring up my scores in my science course, so my mom wouldn’t look at me with disappointment. I tried to be better, but it would simply make things harder, because nothing I did would ever measure up. They would always want more, and to get that, they pushed me harder and longer until I fell down.

But they would never pick me up, or extend a hand to help me; instead, they would curse me under their breath, remarking about how all the other kids, the brighter kids, the greater kids, would step over me and pass me by. I was the child forced to hold the heavy yoke, one of hopes, dreams, aspirations; and when it got too much, when my bones broke underneath its weight, I was the one to blame. And to be appreciated again, to feel wanted, to feel loved by the very ones who created me, I’d pick the burden right back up, hoist it over my shoulders and carry on, stumbling over their lashings, knees scraped, fingers broken. I would look at my younger sister, who wouldn’t work half as hard as I did, who slept on her bed peacefully, never woken up by the demons of her own mind; I would cry salty tears and swallow the bitterness in my throat, take care of her when my parents needed me to; defend her in front of them to ensure she never had a life similar to how I did. While my body was beaten and broken down, hers is still intact and growing; where I have sunspots, she has no blemishes. She is free to live life with reckless abandon, throw her cares to the wind; and I am stuck in the confinements of my family’s hope, a prison I try so desperately to get out of.

But I can never escape, because my mother and father have chipped away at my soul, creating a terrible creature so desperate for their approval, so willing to be bent. Even when I try to break away, disappointment chases after me; when they demonize me, praying to the God above about me, about my anger and my personality and my ruthless ways, I find myself running back; throwing myself into more and more until I cannot breathe. And even when I succeed in my rebellions, I am punished severely, ears ringing and shoulder halfway dislocated, tears streaming down my face, voice hoarse from screaming, broken skeleton, shattered soul. The way I have been raised has doomed me forever, to a lifetime of trying to solve myself, my jigsaw puzzle, looking everywhere for the pieces; only to realize my parents have scattered them away. Fears I have developed, anxieties I maintain, routines I follow- they all seem so simple, so fickle, so irrational, but I cannot be free from them. 

It has progressed to a point where I worry about my future, that I can never be loved or desired, the idea that my life will always be one of doubting myself, afraid that I will turn into the very people who have shaped me into who I am. My nightmares are filled with crying children who look a lot like me; not a spitting image but a reflection of my face, little girls who are sobbing for no particular reason. When I try to touch them, figments of my imagination, they shrink away, terror in their eyes; and that is when I realize who they are- my crying children, my little girl, a mirror of my soul, wearing the same terror I live with today. That reality scares me to death, a world I do not want to live in; because while I do know, inherently, what not to do when raising a child, I am terrified I will exhibit the darkest parts of me, one that has been passed down for generations, the same persecution that surrounded my mother and father growing up, what inevitably led them to become the way they are, cruel and deceiving, manipulative and forceful.

I do not want to repeat history; I want to burn those pages, toss the precedents of my childhood into the fire, rip apart my trauma and mold it into something beautiful. But I am not strong enough, and maybe that was always how it was meant to be; codified into my blood, something inescapable, no matter how much I try to fight it. Everything I have inherited, I push down; my mom’s obsession, my dad’s wrath, my vexations. I try to be happy, sunlight and rain, in order to forget my worst parts, to hide my scars.

The voices in my head rebuke me; my heart is confused and does not know where to go; nevertheless, my head knows one thing- I was born an oxymoron, but I refuse to die as one.