From Robert Rosser's DE ENGL 101 class:

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. She always worried about her frizzy hair. She even laughed at jokes she didn’t think were funny. She kept herself isolated from adventure. She always thought she knew best, refused to look at the past and kept her nose in everyone else’s business. And worst of all, she rolled her eyes at everything.

I spent my years of young American upbringing in the cold Midwestern state of Minnesota. My father struggled to run his own business, but always with high hopes and determination. My mother worked as a secretary for a large corporation in Minneapolis, but left it when I was about seven to climb the corporate ladder and eventually hit the glass ceiling. My older brother teased me, bullied me and made fun of me in front of his friends and mine. His hope was to make me go away or embarrass me, but I just wanted to be like him. So when he told me I was a “butthead” and his friends laughed, I rolled my eyes, laughed with them as excitement pumped through my body simply because of the attention.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. I had self-control. I began middle school just like any other brave new piece of insecure meat. I was ready to be trampled, ridiculed and judged for every imperfection I embodied. My father told me I was beautiful and everyone was going to love me, just like he did. My mother promised she would help put my hair into a neat, tight ponytail so my crazy curls wouldn’t fall in my face. I cried because she pulled my hair too hard and told her to get away from me. My brother told me I looked like I had my eyes lifted and that it must have been the last step in the adoption process to make me look like part of the family. I cried again because I felt so ugly.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. I knew what I liked. My first couple of years of high school went as smooth as they could go for a young lady. I managed to keep good grades, worked at my father’s progressing business in the afternoons and went to all the best parties with my friends. I dated a handsome and popular boy in the grade above me and he took me to all the school dances. His sense of humor was lame, but it made me feel good to be with him and to be seen smiling with him, so I did. My father was protective and thought no one deserved to date me. My mother told me that my boyfriend was a bad influence and I told her she was always trying to ruin my life. My brother comforted me after we fought, talking to me about how parents can be so unfair but he always ended our heart-to-hearts telling me to quit being such a brat.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. She never left her home state. After I graduated high school, I ventured out of Minnesota in the hopes of finding bigger and better things. I joined the Army and left for basic training six days after I turned eighteen. My former-Marine father said he was so proud of me and knew that I could be successful. My mother cried, begged me not to leave and wrote me letters every single day about how worried she was about me. My brother had a tear in his eye when he hugged me goodbye and thanked me because he had always wished he had a brother instead of a sister.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. I knew what I wanted. I found him at my first duty station in North Carolina and I married him five months later. It was a beautiful ceremony of five; the extremely young bride and groom, their two best friends and the magistrate. I was an adult; nineteen years old and I knew what I was doing. I was in love and we had the rest of our lives to live together happily. I told my family two weeks after the vows were taken. My father thought he was a stand-up kind of guy, very honest and sincere. He congratulated me and said he wished me all the happiness in the world. My mother wouldn’t talk to me. She said I had made a huge mistake. My brother didn’t care either way. He said that he was happy it was me making our mother so upset for once instead of him.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. I wanted to see my family. I went home on leave soon after my husband moved out. My father welcomed me home with open arms and open-ended offers to show my soon-to-be ex-husband his nine millimeter. My mother cleaned my untouched bedroom and made my bed. My brother took me to local bars where my old high school friends hung out and told stories about when I was little and used to dance in front of my mirror and lipsync Mariah Carey.

“You’re just like her.”

No I wasn’t. I kept to myself. The night before I flew back to North Carolina, I decided to sit alone in my room and look through an old chest my mother had given me as a little girl. I had always kept my television and stereo on top of it. They hadn’t moved for a good ten years. I found an old diary inside. As I read the pages, I rolled my eyes at the self-conscious girl who made her way through school worrying about her looks and what people thought about her. I felt a stab in my heart when I read about leaving home and marrying at nineteen, thinking it was the best decision. The written feelings were all too familiar and I began to cry. As I closed her diary, my mother walked through the door and I realized they had all been right for so many years.

I am just like her.