Can I Leave Them Behind?

For most people family is the single most important thing in the world. The problem is, not all families are good.  With the news today we hear stories about families ripped apart, about domestic abuse, familial murders, and worse. My family isn’t bad. No one is abused and at the end of the day that means that we’re okay. Right?

See what many people forget is that family really isn’t everything. I came to that realization today when my acceptance letter arrived. Harvard. I actually got into Harvard University, a school I’ve dreamed of attending my entire life. The only problem is that it’s in Massachusetts and I live in Bend, Oregon, meaning this school is about as far away from home as I can possibly get without leaving the country. I would have to leave behind everything I’ve ever known, I’d have to leave behind my family.

Following our dreams is important, everyone knows that, I know that. But what happens if your dreams and your family’s dreams don’t match up? Leaving home would be an unforgivable crime in their eyes because no one else has ever done it. To them, family should stick together no matter what, even if that means forgetting about your dreams.

Remember how I said that my family isn’t bad? Well I meant that in the more traditional sense, the sense that no one would hit me or my siblings and that my parents aren’t going to get divorced. In my town people think we’re this picture-perfect family, my family is tight-knit and huge, who wouldn’t want that? What people don’t see is what happens once we get home, once the doors are closed and locked and no one can witness any of us falling apart. They don’t hear the constant screaming, or the sounds of thing being broken. They don’t hear the racist comments that many would only associate with the deep South. They don’t hear me slowly losing my mind, or begging my family to stop. But, then, even my family doesn’t hear that.

So yes, I want to leave. I want to leave more than anything and make a life for myself that I can actually be proud of. If I have kids, I want to be able to look them in the eyes and tell them that their mother was brave. That in that moment I finally did what was best for me, not what was best for them. Maybe I’m selfish if I do this, but at this point in my life I feel as though I earned a little selfishness. I have been nothing but the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect student, the perfect athlete. I have done everything that my family has asked of me without question and because of that I’m not even sure I know what’s me and what’s them at this point.

My entire life it has been my goal to make something important out of myself. I want, more than anything in this world, to help people. I want to make the world a better place so that kids like me, girls like me, don’t have to struggle under the weight of what others think they should be. By following my dreams and creating my own path, I can take the first step in that direction and finally be free of the constraints that my family has forced me into.

But what comes of my family when I leave? Will the screaming stop, or will it only get worse? Will my brother and father finally, blessedly, get along, or will they tear each other apart? Will my parents sleep in the same room again, or will they just grow further apart? Worst out of all this are the thoughts of my sister. We’re as close together in age as we can possibly be and thick as thieves. The thing is my sister has this darkness about her that even I have begun to struggle to fight off. If I leave will she simply succumb without a fight? When I come home will there be anything left of my sister that I can even recognize? Oh God, I can’t bear to leave if all I’m doing is sentencing my family to an even worse fate. How can I possibly be that selfish?

I am a terrible daughter and an even worse sister. If I leave then surely that will be true, because only an awful person could subject their family to these things. I have to stay; I know that now. Someone had to be the glue that holds this family together, and I have fulfilled that role for as long as I can remember. No one else will step up to do it because no one else ever has. Perhaps this truly is my place in the world, perpetually by my family’s side. I can go to local college and find a way to change the small world that I have right here. Compromise is a part of everyone’s life and it’s not that big of a deal for me to pass up Harvard. Changing a small part of the world will be just as satisfying as changing the world as a whole.

Wrong. I’m an adult now, I have the right to make my own choices no matter what my family thinks. If making this decision makes me selfish then I wish I had become selfish a long time ago. They’ll be fine without me, and if they aren’t that’s their burden to bear, they brought it upon themselves. I finally have to accept the fact that I deserve to be happy even if the life I have lived so far has denied it. My place is wherever I chose for it to be and my role in the world will be far greater than anyone in my town could have ever imagined. I can only hope that my family can forgive me and that I won’t be losing them over this decision. However, the choice is entirely on them. Following my dreams is not something that I should be punished for, it’s something that my family should want for me. I’m finally beginning to understand that they’ve been holding me back. My entire life I have attributed the word toxic to friends and people I see on the street, I never thought that I could describe my family in this way. The fact is, I have been forced to play a role that was never mine to play, I lost parts of my childhood that I can never get back and maybe, just maybe, I deserve some kind of retribution for that. Family does not have to be my everything, at least not this family. Blood may be thicker than water, but that doesn’t mean you can’t drown in it.