My father lives in a world of black and white. There is wrong and good, there are prodigies and then there is me. He is disappointed in me. I know that for a fact. He is concerned that I spend time on things other than studying. For goodness sake, the man isn’t even proud of me. I know his father did the same for him: pushed him to his limit. But I’m a girl who has lived in America for most of her life. To me, my world is small, a small protective bubble where everyone at my school knows everyone. It is comforting. But I have big dreams, I long to be a writer someday, I long to travel the world. My friend once told me that I have “wander lust,” I can’t live in this small world for the rest of my life despite its southern siren call. I need to get out and writing is my ticket out. My world revolves around school, writing, lip-gloss and other things like that. It’s not in my nature to be pushed.

At times, when I sleep, I cry into my pillow as his words turn around in my head. He makes me feel like an egg, an egg with bricks and bricks stacked on top. It’s holding its own, but everyone knows that with a little more weight, a little more push, and it’ll crack. Correction: I’ll crack.

He said he was concerned that I spent so much time on the computer. He doesn’t know that I spend time on my computer to get away from this small bubble of a world. I spend time on my computer to write, to create worlds where I’m free from his menacing, choking words and expectations. In these worlds I’m good, I’m a prodigy, I make my father proud. And then I wake up and realize I’ve been crying, because in reality, these dreams are so far away from the truth. His dream for me is not the one I want, his dream for me is to go to an Ivy League and become world-renounced. My dream is to become a writer, touring the world and the sights, writing by the Seine, curing my wanderlust. But these dreams disappear as soon as they come, how could I go against my father’s word when it is law?

I’m a fighter. I’ve been doing karate since I was 5 years old. But this fight has been a long, tiring fight, and he still stands strong while I’m about to crumble to nothing from the exhaustion. Dreams are one thing, but my father’s word is what will become of me. Isn’t it ironic that in a world of freedom, I remain so trapped?