((This is going to be in first person, because why not?))

I never thought I'd go back.

The Ark was just as cold and unforgiving as I remembered, by the time we went down to Earth I always believed that I would be free of the memories that lay within these walls. The screams and the echoes of crashing at night, the holes in the wall and broken furniture that may have just taken my childhood away too soon, and given it back too late.

But maybe that was just me.

I hated to feel lonely when I was up there, because I wasn't entirely alone. There was McAllen, Lillian, Ivy and Benjamin, it wasn't like I was abandoned without another soul to speak to. It was selfish and childish and told myself to stop thinking like that.

And yet each night I would lie there in my childhood bed and wonder. "Is this really any better?"

Without the screams and the yelling the silence was eerie. The fact that I knew they'd never returned might have just made it worse. I know my parents once lived here, no matter how much I liked to pretend they didn't. The evidence is scattered like toys on a child's bedroom floor, but it's not like I would understand that simile.

You can still see where my father had punched the wall, where my mother slammed the door slightly too hard and the scuff marks of feet against the floor.

I ignore it.

Six years was a long time to adapt to your surroundings, but I still felt out of place.

I counted the days till we could return, and year after year, birthday after birthday it never came.

I grew from child to teen and that whole time I felt empty. Like nothing had ever really been inside me and I'd almost forgotten the feeling of running by hand against the trunk of a tree, my skin get caught in the rain, my lungs receiving fresh air.

I stop myself. Before the thoughts take over my mind and I'm shrouded with desire and longing. The need to feel at home again.

Maybe that was it. I was home sick.

But homesick doesn't explain the need to fight, the painful thoughts that haunt my mind, telling me that I'll never be good enough.

Strangely enough it's never my voice that says that in my head. It's everyone else.

It's Ivy telling me I'll never be able to fight. Lillian telling me I'm simply getting in the way. It's Axel telling me I'm a waste of air. Amber asking why I didn't go after her. My Mother asking why I went on without her. My Father reminding me that I'll never be good enough for this family.

And it's all in my head, but I know it's true. I think it's true.

So I push myself. I'll play piano like my mother and echo her songs, but I always press the wrong notes. I'll fight like my father and become strong and agile, but I always get the stance wrong.

I always get something wrong and it's never enough!

I guess as a kid I had an excuse. I was young and naive and not much was expected of me.

But as I age I see that I'm becoming a burden. Dead weight that people have to drag around with them and I'm never of any use. 

Sometimes I think the walls of the Ark did this too me, put all those thoughts into my head, but sometimes I think I just want to hand away the blame.

Because I can't handle my own thoughts, so how on Earth- sorry - How in space will I be able to handle anything else.

So I fight, I improve and I change. Because that's the only way I'll be able to survive.

I can't rely on everyone else anymore, because they won't always be there.

I need to learn how to become my own person with my own mind and my own melody, even if I don't think I'm good enough.

I just need to keep telling myself that I am.