I hear my dad strumming his guitar downstairs. It's the sound of his disappointment in me not being what he wants me to be.

I hear my mom running her blender while I try to speak, the grinding that hammers my ears shredding my heart and soul. She puts the blender on so that she can't hear the words I have to say. And I only speak to her when it's important.

I hear my dad snoring, having fallen asleep once more at the sound of my voice as I try to carry on a conversation.

They expect me to do my homework, they expect me to finish high school. But that doesn't matter because I have dreams. My dreams have nothing to do with grades or school. They see me as a failure when I am more of a success than they could ever dream.

They call me lazy for dreaming, drifting away to faraway worlds. They treat me like I am incompetent, unwanted, stupid. They invalidate my soul itself. They are blind to what matters to me.

"Don't show others the family's dirty laundry" my mom says. It turns out that's a tactic of emotional abusers to try and keep one silent. I cannot be silent in my pain.

If only they wanted the real me, the dreamer, the heart, the soul. And yet when I hand them my heart and show them who I am, they crush it until all that is left is dust.

All my life I grew up believing my emotions didn't matter, that I didn't matter. And now I'm grasping the truth, that the fact is that I do matter and it isn't selfish to feel the way I do. It isn't wrong for me to feel unloved, abandoned, unwanted, when they try to make me say something else.

I'm tired of handing them my heart and letting them crush it in front of my eyes. My dreams are all that matter and I'm not ever going to let them get in the way.

My dream is to become a published author and to become well known. I want to connect the world with my stories and use my writing to heal other hurting bleeding crushed hearts.

And like the last line in Neon Pegasus, my favorite song, no matter how insane and ridiculous they seem, I must follow my dreams. By touching one life at a time I am going to make a difference, and one day I might even change the world.

But as for now I'm just a teenage girl in her last year of high school with dreams to big to contain, who is invalidated by almost everyone around her because nobody can see the validity in her dreams.

Like one of my favorite quotes from my characters, "I'm not staying down."

No matter how many times they knock me down or crush my heart, I'm not staying down.