Renesmee's POV
"Mom, I'm not a child anymore, I should be able to make my own decisions," Renesmee said in a calm, collected voice, making sure to keep her emotions in check. Bella regarded her daughter carefully, and Renesmee knew that her mother didn't know what to say, what to make of her. Well, what did she expect? Her mother was mentally and physically 18, on the cusp of being 19, for the past 7 years, and she will remain that way for the rest of eternity. Renesmee didn't know what to think about that. Whenever she tried to comprehend that idea, she got a funny feeling in her stomach, so, like with everything that made her feel uneasy, she pushed it to the back of her mind, in its own neat, little, packed up box that would not be reopened until she wanted it to be.
Almost every emotion was like that, analyzed and packaged, only opened when she felt it was necessary. She couldn't deal with events if she didn't do it that way. But most of the time, she didn't have to feel or try to understand her feelings for herself. Her family was there, swooping in at the first signs of trouble, and would decide for her how to interpret her feelings.
She didn't know what to feel. Normal families mostly had love for each other. And she did love her family. Of course she did. But let's start with Carlisle, the father. He was what Renesmee wanted to be, selfless and compassionate and a healer. He saved people, from death and giving up. But she couldn't help the feeling that he was really the most selfish of them all. He decided to stop someone from dying, to condemn them to Hell, because he thought that he knew they would want eternal life rather than to die. He thought he knew what was best, cared too much to let them just die. But sometimes caring for someone was the thing that hurt them the most. But, like every confusing, and defying emotion, she packaged it up into a neat little box and stored it in the back of her mind, not to be opened unless she wanted it to. That way, she could aspire to be like her grandpa, saving those who need to be saved, even if they don't want to be saved.
Like her aunt. They would say things like, "Oh Renesmee, it's a happy ending. Rosalie finds Emmett. If she wasn't there that night, she wouldn't have saved Emmett". So Renesmee pushed the flicker of emotion she did feel, of despair, into a box. Because even though her beautiful aunt was violated in the most terrible way, it was for the best. And she tried to ignore the fact that her aunt hated that she wasn't allowed to die that night. That her aunt was forced to live with her pain, live with her wish taken away, for all of eternity. But Renesmee knew it was for the best, because if her aunt did die, Emmett would be dead, and quite frankly, so would Renesmee. So Renesmee tried to make up for Rosalie's lack of her own children by being whatever her aunt wanted her to be.
She wanted to be what Esme wanted as well, for her loving grandmother did everything for everyone else. "Esme loved her son so much, and it was okay when Carlisle saved her, because now she has all the children she had longed to care for". So Renesmee knew that she would be everything that Esme wanted in a child as well, even if she wasn't a boy. Renesmee would push the idea to the back of her mind that Carlisle had no right to make Esme forever long for a son that she could never hope to see again in the afterlife, because vampires went to Hell.
Or that was where her father said vampires went. He would always tell her that she was going to Heaven, because she was only half vampire. But she knew that only good people went to Heaven, and so far she had done nothing to deserve that label. Her family bathed in pools of money, enough to get everyone out of poverty. But she would push that idea away, into its own little box, because she knew that if her father heard her thinking those things, he would tell her how special she was, and how much of a miracle she was, or how much she deserved all the things in the world, even if she had done nothing yet. She was special for simply being born, simply because her parents had sex as different species and had gotten pregnant. She didn't think about that either.
If any one of them was going to Hell, her uncle would be, 100 times over. Her family said that "he was forced into that life style; he didn't mean to be so cruel. But he got through it, and he's atoned for his sins." But who were they to decide that he had atoned? Who was Jasper to decide that he had atoned? The families of his victims would disagree. Even though her mind would jump to the fact that her charismatic, cunning uncle probably did to human woman what the cruel Royce did to her beloved aunt, a small voice in her head would tell her that her darling uncle had atoned. But so did Royce, with his death, right? Of course, technically uncle Jasper was dead, so he couldn't atone through death, therefore if her family said that he had atoned through the way he was trying to live now then she believed them. She would shove that mean thought about her uncle ever violating a woman to the back of her mind and, like Alice, would only look to the future. Because the past was meant to be forgotten.
She thought it was sad that her tiny aunt remembered nothing. What was the point of striving for a future without the knowledge of the past? But her aunt tried. Through many means, she tried to make up for her lack of knowledge about what it meant to be human, and what it meant to live. Her aunt lived vicariously through her mother, and once Bella turned into a vampire, her aunt switched to Renesmee, the perfect, little doll. She was the perfect thing to play make believe with, and her aunt loved to create the perfect life through their countless photoshoots, with the perfect wardrobe, the perfect image. Alice was able to carve Renesmee into the image of how she thought people were supposed to live. Feelings were connected and intertwined with material goods for her tiny aunt. And Renesmee wanted to allow her poor aunt, who forgot what it meant to live as a human, who forgot what it meant to actually live, to enjoy the only way she was able pretend that she knew what it was like to be human. Even if Renesmee didn't particularly like being a doll, and would rather truth than material goods. But Renesmee was not her mother, and a tiny part of her loved being adored and spoiled.
Renesmee idolized her mother, with her selflessness, and utter love for her daughter. Renesmee loved her, but she didn't quite know any more now that in some ways, she was more mature than her mother. But her mom was willing to play happy little family, to pretend to be human, even if she had let go of her humanity with no qualms at all. The first man she fell in love with was the man she signed her life to. And that was all well and good. But sometimes Renesmee didn't want to play happy little family; especially since sometimes she called her Bella, since she forgot that she could call her mom in private. Her mother was her sister in school, so it was weird to play happy little family once they all got home from school. But she did because they must pretend to be human.
Renesmee was the closest of all the Cullen's to actually being human, and they all worshipped her for it. Of course, she knew as much as her vampire relatives of what it meant to be human. She was never human, but she wasn't a vampire either. She was somewhere between, and she didn't quite know how to think or feel about that. So, like everything else, she shoved that feeling into a box, and sealed it, never to be opened, so when her family did tell her how special she was, how unique she was, how utterly above she was from the humans, she believed them.
She was willing to be whatever they wanted her to be, because she couldn't quite figure it out by herself.