Dear Mother and Father

I'm having a hard time express my feeling to my parents so i wrote this letter that I do not think i will ever send
i am a freshmen in high school

So what if I want to try something new? Huh? Isn’t that what high school is about? Setting out to discover new things about yourself, ultimately guiding you on your path to self-discovery.
I may know that I want to be a writer. I may know that I love to write. But just because I know those things does not mean I should limit myself to that. I am a person who just wants to express herself. I want to try new things. I want to have the same opportunities as everyone else. So why am I limiting myself when I have so many options?
I have never done tech before in my life. I have no idea what the experience is like. All I know is that I’ve considered it since the spring dance concert in 7th grade. 7th grade. One and a half years ago.
I’ve waited since then. I’ve tried to do it before. I wasn’t able too. I just told myself to wait and get over it. I would get the chance to do it again. It wouldn’t be too far away. But yet. Instead. When I finally get there. When I finally adapt to high school and feel myself changing for the better. Really working hard at my classes to improve my grades and becoming more organized. I feel myself being put down.
I’m told that I should focus all my effort on writing. On English. On the newspaper. On Journalism. On the things that I like.
But maybe I don’t like all of those things. Writing isn’t just a general thing. Writing is so specific to oneself. There’s creative, there’s nonfiction. There’s journalism—feature style with a personal touch or flat harsh news without taking a side.
Maybe I don’t want to do that. Maybe I want to be the girl who just goes out and writes her heart out. Maybe I don’t want to do all that.
Maybe I want to do something unique of my own that will look good on the college applications. Maybe I will do something better than what you dreamed up. Maybe something up of my own, that I’ve worked at. Not just something you’ve told me to do.
I’m just a freshmen. I have time. I have four years of it. This is my life. I want to live it.
You tell me that I have time. Try to prove the same points that I’m proving to myself. But you tell me this means that I have time to do tech when I can drive myself to and from school. Just wait till I’m a junior. I have time. I have time.
But you just don’t understand. I want to try it now. I don’t want to wait to discover something. What if I find out that I really do love tech? Will you be excited when in two years I finally find what I like?
Even though I highly doubt that I will come to love tech like I just described, I feel that I cannot be bias against something such as tech. It could be anything. So many people enter high school, or even college, set on a certain thing, and then they find a whole new world, brand new to them, that intrigues them and pulls them in. I want to have the same opportunity as everyone else. I want that chance. If that’s meant for me, it’s meant for me.
I don’t want to tell myself to put any opportunities to the side.
I know that I overscheduled myself last year because that’s what I thought. But I was not thinking through my decisions then. I thought I should try everything that I wanted to do, just at a first glance.
I’m not doing that this year. I’ve tried new things, such as trying out for the bowling team. And I realized one thing about that that’s different from all the rest. Brian did that. He did that in high school. So you figure it can’t be that bad. Brian did it. We know that he had some good times with it. Go ahead. Go do it. You can do it.
So you’re afraid of the unknown, are you? Afraid to let me do things that might not end up good on my college application?
So Brian did tech. He didn’t like it. So of course. You don’t like it. So I can’t do it. End of that.
And I get it now. I might not even want to do tech. It doesn’t’ even come to that. it comes down to the fact that you have been pressuring me all along to do better than Brian. And sometimes I can’t live up to your crazy expectations.
I’m just a girl. I want to do try new things. And I know I have other commitments to deal with. I understand that. I totally do. I know that I should honor my commitments and keep with them. And I am honestly trying to do that. I am trying so hard. I have considered so many times quitting bowling. But now I have convinced myself to stay on the team. Just stay on it. Just to prove to you that I can keep a commitment. That I am changing. For the better.
Just to get it out there. I am not going to fail through high school. I am not going to slack off. I am not going to run myself out of Harpeth Hall. I want to do high school the right way. One C will not kill me in the end. It does not mean I will end up with all Fs. It is not the end of the world. Colleges will still accept me for those few Cs I had in freshmen year.
So Brian did not do so well in high school. That doesn’t mean I will. So what if I slack off on one test or two? That’s high school! That’s life! Every human being does it once. So why do you act like if I do it once, it automatically means I’ll do it again?
I don’t need to be told to not make the same mistakes. I know not too. But by saying it. But by enforcing it into my mind every night at dinner by the way you tell Brian to do this and that related to college, relating it all back to his slacking off and then briefly mentioning to me that I can’t do the same, you’re basically telling me I have to be perfect.
You want the perfect child. I always was one as a kid. The kid who never got in trouble. The kid who did this right. Who never did this wrong.
So when I do wrong…when I finally started doing wrong…you couldn’t accept it.
You didn’t want another child who messed up.
You created these expectations for me. Be everything Brian wasn’t. Do everything Brian didn’t. If Brian did this well, then you can do it well too. Like bowling.
But by doing this, you’re creating expectations so high for me, I can’t even reach. I see them floating up above me, so high up. Only perfectionists can reach them. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be ME! NOT PERFECT! ME!
So when I get that C. When I act like a normal girl. You don’t like it. You think back to when you were the valedictorian, taking care of yourself throughout high school. So I may have it better than you did. I might have more opportunities than you did and I might abuse a few of them, for which I apologize, but does that mean I must brush away those opportunities that I want? That I honestly want? Not like the ones in 8th grade…all the different activities I thought I should do?
Tech is one of those things. I understand that. But this year is different. I’ve eliminated most of those activities, and in exchange, replaced them with fewer, lesser activities. New ones. So I can branch out and find new things about myself. Each year brings new things. I’ve only discovered a few things this year so far.
They are so big. They are so big to me. I am so proud of them. Yet you don’t see them.
You only see those two Cs on the report card.