my family is an anomaly.
I keep watching over them, like I've died, like I'm peering at them from some celestial unbelonging body.
I've never belonged.
I'm not sure I've wanted to.

I am my father's daughter, if anything is true, this is so. He is the sort of man who never buys more than a quarter tank of gas at a time, he washes all the dishes by hand even though we have a dishwasher. He loves old houses and much to my mother's dismay, he will never buy a contemporary one. He is always parading us to do things, to all go to the art fair together, or a family bike ride, or a canoe trip. He loves making surprises, I think he collects them sort of, or the reactions, the lifted eyebrows and unexpected smiles. I am just like him, all of me, my thoughts, my observations, what I like about people. But I think him seeing himself in me makes him uncomfortable. We stay friends at a distance, the two of us who love the things everyone else groans about. It is safer that way.

my mother is this little person. The queen of masqarade, of hiding her true feelings. People marvel at how she, itty bitty she, gave birth to me,
this great long, majestic gangly thing. She was always beautiful. Different than the beautiful I am, she lent me none of her features, this woman who I came out of. How strange it is, that I am the most femininely- spirited of all of my sisters, and all of my beauty was given to me by my father.
my mother is trapped. she believes her life has been ruined, and maybe it has. she has never been happy with us all. her and my father are too different, my father believes in windows and my mother believes in walls. She is so afraid I will become like her, trapped in unhappiness, and she'll say to me "I dont wan't you to be Elisabeth I don't want you to be me". I don't understand her completely, that's the father in me, how she can prefer things to places, or why she's always complaining that the kitchen is too small even though at least it's a kitchen. I did inherit something from this woman I am nothing like, and that is her heart. Dispite her trappedness my mother loves people with everything, and truely wishes the best for everyone. I have that inside of me. I also obtained the skill of her masquerade, of being polite in order not to hurt people, something that I have learned is awful, and that my mother has not.

Jenna is this wild thing. Everyone sees her as dangerous and risque and everything in the book. But I see this wild thing, with this wild heart she got from god knows where, who sobs with the weeping and screams with the angry and flies with the seabirds. I envy her, which suprises most everyone, because we externally seem so opposite. I envy her fearlessness and her flighty behavior, she lives on the outside how I do on the inside, we are the freeist of all, we who know no boundries and believe in no walls, and all windows. We understand each other the same way, she envies my luck and I envy her careless attempts to find her own, because of this we are not as close as we should be. I am just like my father. Jenna is like my father on ecstacy.

Ryan lies in the background. He is solid, and yet hearty, a voice of reason, a man amoungst our family of women. A sense of logic in a flood of emotionality. We need him badly. Once again, I am more like him than my sisters. I own his quiet, benevolent demeanor. We keepers of the peace, we benvolios, we calmers of our surrounding mercutios. He is smart like me. He is almost as misplaced as I am in our family.

my eldest sister Shelly is one to understand. She understands most everything. People at least. She fixes them like nobodies business. I share characteristics with all of my family, My father's beliefs, my mother's heart, Jenna's fire, Ryan's demeanor, but none of these people understand me correctly. They look at me with heads cocked, scratching their brains, trying to make sense out of this subtle spirited way of mine that none of them possess. But Shelly, as she does all people, looks straight ahead, and understands every particle of thought I own. While everyone else is trying to fill in the blanks about me, Shelly is just smiling, knowing. I love her intensly for this, for this connection we share that I do not share with anyone else. She herself is a bit of everything, mostly laughter. We need her, to understand everyone. She has fire like Jenna too though, nothing halfhearted, ever. Shelly sees soft rain when others see storms.

Lindsay is foreign to me. We have no commonalities. Our temperences are nothing the same. We see each other at a far distance, but that is how many of us see her. Whereas ryan and I dont fit in with our family, lindsay sort of does, but has outcasted herself. We don't really hear from her much anymore.

Caroline is a bitch. That is what people say anyway. She has Jenna's temperence- her no-bullshit, I'll do whatever I want, who gives a fuck what anyone thinks- without Jenna's lightness. Everyone calls her baby Jenna. But Jenna is just like that in essence, Caroline is like that as a hard shell. She is like that to protect herself from things, and I see this, because she is closest to me in age, because I've nearly raised her. I know she is not really a bitch. She is very goofy and strange really, but chooses to hide it from the world, although whenever she is with me its exposed. She has attatched herself to me more so than I ever would have thought. This different girl who I have grown up with. Caroline is my mother reincarnated, although she doesn't realize it yet. She has my body, and it is strange for me to watch her sometimes now that she's all developed, this person walking around with my legs and half of my face. She is shorter than me though. My mother.

Chandler is a child, or he will be for as long as we keep treating him like one, even though he hardly is anymore. I am anxious to see what he becomes. He loves everything and everyone and is always saying things like how beautiful the sunset is, and picking flowers for my mom for no reason.

and me.
me, who sort of drifts between all of these people,
me, who was born with all of this stupid talent I have no desire for,
me, who stumbles upon luck at seemingly every street corner.
Them, who strive for these things
and me, who gets unwantingly showered with them.
me, who is five years apart from everyone.
they are all within a year or two of each other. and then there was me. six years after Jenna, five years before caroline.
awesome.

no wonder I don't belong.

they are all bodies, and I am a spirit. We look the same but we speak different languages.
I read books instead of magazines and take pictures instead of shots.
I cant tell funny jokes but I can create a masterpiece on canvas given four hours and some good oils.
They are these classically pretty people, and then there is me, this strange, different beauty.
none of them have curls.
but I do.
Their eyes are green.
Mine are grey.
They are earth.
I am the sea.

can't I just stay on the shore. just for a minute.
please.
I just want to feel what it's like.

but my family is an anomaly.