zara’s diary: entry one.
hey,
today is august 31st 2021; the last day of summer and the last day i can call my "family" my own. it feels surreal that i woke up this morning not knowing just how badly my day would end but with just fifty minutes of summer left, i can confirm that this is rock bottom.
dad never accepted danny and i knew he wouldn't. in a weird way, i'd accepted that. i figured we'd coexist and dance around the subject like we do with one million other topics in our family, but no. first, he tried to set me up with another boy - mattheo sinclair - who, can i add, i've never officially met. and then, when that didn't work, he decided the next best thing was to cut me off.
i've been cut off before and i figured it was a bargaining chip to persuade me to come around to his way of thinking. but then the words came. i'm an ungrateful bitch, a disappointment, forever living in lacey's shadow, i should've disappeared rather than her and i make him sick. the part that hurt the most was that he said it with such force and certainty, and if made me wonder just how long he'd been waiting to get it off his chest. had it been forever? has he ever actually liked me?
of course my sisters were supportive enough but i think not pushing back on him or questioning his judgement cements where their loyalties lie. they can tuck me into bed and offer me reassurance all they like, not one of them has come out and straight up said that he's wrong...not to his face. they're his family first and that's something i feel like i need to remember. when it comes down to him or me, it's always him.
now the dust has settled, i feel like everything is out of reach. reaching for danny feels more like annoying him; even if he says it's not. reaching for friends feels like i'm being whiny; they all have other things going on. even reading the group chat makes me feel worlds away. i can't relate to any of it. none of it matters and sometimes i wonder, if i stayed quiet forever, would anybody really even give a shit?
the topic of porches and beautiful homes came up today and for me, that's escapism. the life i've dreamed of for as long as i can remember is a french country styled home with a beautiful porch dressed in season appropriate decor. in spring, pink and yellow flowers bloom with seasonal vegetables. and, in the summer, it becomes lighter. strings of fairy lights run through the cascading leaves of willow trees and i can sit in the garden with friends, drinking wine and talking about nothing in particular. autumn brings halloween & colder nights; pumpkin scented everything with colour schemes of warm brows and oranges. and as for winter, do i really need to put it into words? pure magic, of course.
it's not the most ambitious of dreams and falling out of a family like mine, some might argue that it'd be taking a step back, rather than climbing the "success" ladder. the absence of designer labels, camera angles, photoshop and social gatherings filled with the most unsociable people is failure to some people. but, what i think they don't realise is that "regressing" in the eyes of society can be just as hard as progressing. how do you achieve peace when you were raised to endure inhumane levels of chaos?
i guess that's the question.