Antithesis
Because the world is not made of sunshine and daisies. A different spin on Claire and Quil.
Secrets burn the person who keeps them; eating them from the inside outside out and festering the soul. Keeping one for sixteen years keeps no one safe- but only pushes away the people whom were meant to be saved.
But I never asked to be the damsel in distress and I never wanted to be someone who had everything chosen for them. When I found out what my life was, what it consisted of and what it all meant, I wasn't happy. How could I be happy when the people who were closest to me kept from me the biggest secret of my life?
When was it ok to stop lying to me? At sixteen? Eighteen? When is it ever ok to keep from someone that they will grow up and have someone they will never escape from, because they can't bear to be apart from you? My life was planned since the moment I was two and it was just expected of me to follow it.
Girls grow up and they want to be princesses or fairies; to live in some magical world where they're different or special. Isn't it enough for me just to want to grow up normal? To go to school and learn and have friends, eventually go to college and get a normal job. I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. I want to be what everyone else is. I don't want to know about vampires and werewolves and that the reason I was never allowed outside at night wasn't because of the mosquitos.
I don't want my soul mate chosen for me; I don't even want a soul mate. I want something with someone that isn't perfect. I want to have arguments, I want a partnership and I want something that isn't whole. So that I can laugh and cry and hate and feel. Because what I will have with him, won't be real. How can it, when all I have to do is demand and it will be done?
Everyone else seems so content with their imprints. Emily and Sam; harmonious, but I can't see past her scars and the time when once, he didn't love her. He broke Leah's heart when he fell off her world because gravity tore him down. How could it be ok, for my imprint to be so much older than me? Age has, and always will be, a number but how can he be perfect for me? Time has stopped for him and it won't start ticking again until I accept him. He will wait forever for me if I needed him too.
But I don't because I won't be pushed into something. Because I don't love him and don't see why everyone else thinks I should. I want to choose what I want and I can't do that here. Because when you walk into a house full of people you see their looks and you know they are waiting for the moment when you realise, the great epiphany, that you're in love with someone you've known for as long as you can remember.
And you see the small smiles between the imprintee's because they can't wait to have one more person to share their joy with. But they weren't lied to and they haven't been kept in the dark. It was always stark white for them and they didn't grow up with uncles who weren't actually family and best friends who weren't entirely human.
Because family doesn't hurt you, they don't leave scars. And I know it's not only hard for me, but for my parents and for Quil because I know he has the short end of the stick. My parents will never lose me but I won't become something I can't stand so that all of this can be justifiable to Quil. I can't stand the content-ness Emily and Rachel have. Or the giddiness Kim must feel whenever she looks at Jared and knows he's hers.
I see the girl I want to be, and the one everyone else is waiting for. I look in the mirror and want to jump headfirst into that version of me, wishing it could be easy because I can't quite get my reflection to smile back at me these days. I want to not feel scared but I can't seem to get myself to mesh.
My out of body experience happens each day when I get up in the morning and see myself looking back at me. I hold her hand and we face the day together because we aren't quite separate but not whole either. I hear the wolves whisper when I sit at Emily's table because I know they are waiting and I can see Quil smiling at me from over the kitchen bench. I grip my alter's hand harder and we try in unison to smile because I think we're both hoping that if we do this together, it may look whole.
But I can see he's waiting too, and he's been waiting for sixteen years, and they know I know. I pretend because I don't want to have to choose but I know I can't hold out forever because disappointment is a heavy burden to bear. When everyone else has been holding these expectations of you alight for years, it's not so easy to blow them out.
But I can't stay on the reserve forever and Quil will never want to leave. I don't want to cook and clean and raise children and work at a corner store. I want to travel and live in a city or move to Australia. I want to work in a skyscraper or see the Pyramids or live on an island. But I can't do that if Quil has responsibilities. But everyone else seems so content with their little lives in their little houses telling stories but knowing the truth. And truthfully, their lives don't appeal to me because when I'm with Quil, I feel full but not content. And when I finish breakfast he looks at me with brown eyes.
"Claire-bear?" he asks me and I turn to face him. Confusion is easy enough for me to fake these days.
"Yes?"
I can see it hurts him when I pretend, and he knows I'm pretending, and he drops his hands to his pockets and mumbles something about nothing. Jacob gives him a sympathetic look (as if he weren't once pitiful himself) and I can feel Sam's disappointed gaze. Because everyone is waiting for me to speak up but I've lost my voice. I pretend Quil never told me and that Emily got attacked by a bear and that Renesmee actually is the age she looks.
Because the world is not sunshine and daisies and I'm sick of everyone else's happy ending and expecting me to have one too. I don't want what I have, but maybe I'm just being selfish. I can feel the walls closing in and I just want to pack my bags and walk away. I'm hollow inside and I try to be what everyone else is desperately wishing I was because I'm causing nothing but pain. It'll be easy enough to leave one night and disappear because I know wolf Quil doesn't sleep outside my house anymore. He doesn't do a lot of stuff anymore. But I am just a girl, imprinting is just a legend and Quil is just a guy.
My life is my own and my feelings don't seem to matter to anyone else but me. I will hurt him more than I can bear to stand but if I stay I will fall farther than I will ever be able to comprehend. These days, I've had enough. I've had my fill, reached my limits, been pushed to the edge and pulled back again. I've had enough of people telling me who to be and what to do, almost to the point that I don't know anything anymore. And when I look up into the face of my (almost) always smiling imprinter, I feel like everything has been blown too far out of proportion.
Because I will never feel anything more for him than I do now and all I can do is walk away.
And it'll be all too easy to keep going and never stop.