Cleaning

Today I began what will most likely be an excruciatingly tedious process-that of disassembling, rearranging, and repainting my room. I'm lucky to have friends who are all for helping me, or else I feel I'd never achieve my goal. It's going smoothly, I emptied out a lot of junk, put away laundry, took apart my old desk and moved my computer to an even older one that was once my father's. I picked out paint swatches today. Sunflower Yellow is my color. I'm hoping the change will bring some warmth back into me, and help me leave a great deal of things behind me. I want to be nothing but who I am currently, and living within walls decorated by a 14-year old Lin felt as if I were living inside a time capsule.

However, this process spurred a rather unexpected (and just as unnecessary) confrontation with my mother. The context of the argument isn't of import. It's more the fact that there was one. My relationship with her has never been easy, and over the past few months I've developed a lot of respect for her purely because she survived me through my phases of adolescence. But there's a great deal lacking between her and I. Too much resentment and disrespect lays in an ocean of distrust and misunderstanding between us. The most I can muster anymore is to be as short as possible and avoid conversations, because my grades and my future and my faults are generally the only subjects called upon. I wish I understood her. I wish I could go to her with my fears and joys and tears and heartache. I wish my highest walls weren't to shut her out. I wish I had her acceptance, her support, and her understanding. I have so many wishes where she's involved.

I don't want to leave in a few months glad to go. Our family has become nothing but emptiness, and that is because we never go deeper than the surface on any subject worth pressing. I'll love you always, anyway, of course. But I feel like a stranger in my own home all too much.