Some people tell me I have too much pride, and it's mostly my mother, but I really do. I blame it on my Padre though. He always tells us, me especially, that we have to be the best at everything we do, whether it be academics, sports, band, ect. Always do we have to be the best, go above and beyond all the others. He tells us to be better than him. He never got the opportunities we get today, so we need to embrace what we have and do what we can to be the best, to succeed.

Sometimes I feel that without that pressure to succeed I wouldn't be where I am today. My best work is when I'm under pressure. But as I sit here, arguing with him on this topic, I think I regret having too much pride, and the fact that I won't be the bigger man and stop this makes me hate it even more. Padre tells us to be better than him, but we can never be smarter than him because of what he knows and went through that we didn't.

"I. Could. Get. Up." I say through clenched teeth recalling the day I fell in the snow.

"Don't talk to your father like that!" My mother exclaims at me. "Show some respect burro."

Tears well up in my eyes, but I don't let them fall. I can't show weakness, not again. Never again. I read somewhere that if you look up, people won't be able to tell that you're crying. With my parents though, you always have to look them straight in the eyes when you speak.

"Nope! You couldn't get back up! We all saw!" Padre says with humor in his voice.

Pride will be my end. I could get up and walk away, but that would both get me a beating and a hit to my ego. If I sit here arguing though, some other part of me would get a punch towards it.

"That's not true!" I cry. "Victoria was pushing from behind me and my boots don't have any friction underneath them anymore! Plus, both my hands were full with my binder and book!"

"I was trying to pick you up!" Victoria exclaims from her seat.

"Ya, but you weren't any help!" I coldly state back.

"I bet you were too fat to get up!" Denise snickers from her seat. Ooh, she should be glad I can't beat her. Sometimes I daydream about kicking her senseless. I feel like that makes me a bad person though.

"Shut up, no one was talking to you!" I yell at her. I am beyond pissed. I'm so tired of all the stupid things. Always telling me what I can and cannot do, always talking about as if I'm not even here. Who do they fucking think they are?

"Hey!" My mother shouts.

Padre gets up and pulls me by the ear. I whimper and stand from my seat as he starts to pull on it upwards and harder. Most of the time I can't even feel anything from how numb my ear has gotten. He pulls me around the table and into the living room. From there he smacks me on my back and pushes me towards the hallway where I crash into the wall. Tears are streaming beyond the confinement of my eyes, but I refuse to put my head down. Instead, I keep my chin up.

"To your room!" He shouts and points towards my door. I do as told, knowing the minute I enter the room I'll regret everything I did and think of ways in which I could have argued, could have stood up for myself. But right now, I'm too emotionally filled to think.

Once in my room with the door shut (I made sure not to slam it or else have worse consequences), I begin to fume and curse myself out for being so fucking weak. I've been promising myself for so long that I wouldn't come back to this, I wouldn't be the weak girl I once was and still am.

Tears stream down my eyes even faster than before when I hear them talking and laughing like before. I used to fantasize ways in which I would and could change myself for the better, but no matter what I promise myself, I still stay the same.

My phone vibrates and my eyes widen. I don't like the fact that my parents take my phone. Whenever they do, they scroll through my text messages and go through my gallery, not that I do anything bad, I just don't like that kind of invasion on my privacy. My phone vibrating will only cause unwanted attention to go towards it.

Quickly getting up, making sure to not let the floorboards squeak too loudly, I reach my phone and mute it. Not even bothering to check what the notification was about, I stuff it into a drawer and pray that my parents won't go asking for it.

'Never again,' I promise myself. 'Never again will I let them walk all over me. I'll show them, I'll show them all that I can lose weight and I'll do it because I want to, not because they told me to. I will do this if it's the last thing I do.' I fall asleep on promises to myself for change.

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The next morning I wake up with my face all groggy and gross. I can feel my eyes pried shut and still puffy from falling asleep crying last night. My head is aching and now my shoulder is as well. This will be a fun day.

A glance at my alarm clock tells me it's six in the morning, two more hours until the rush begins. I go into the bathroom and do my business before taking a glance in the mirror. Despite having already been in here for around three minutes, my eyes still squint through the brightness of the lights. My brown hair is up in a lion's mane and my eyes are puffy and very small looking compared to my usually bright and alert brown eyes. I open the faucet and begin to wash my face. I don't need nosy siblings asking questions that I don't want to answer.

With the click of the lock, I open the door and step out into the darkness of the hallway. I'm only wearing my left sock, my right having once again fallen off throughout the night, and it's freezing. The dark shadows hiding in the darkness also creep me out. I woke up and walked like a pro to the bathroom, but I run back to my bed as though there's a serial killer that was sent to kill me.

I quietly, making sure not to step on a telltale floorboard, walk across my room towards my phone and then just as fast run back to the comforts of my bed. It doesn't take long for my feet to warm up underneath the covers and I sigh in relief. My sister's snoring settles what was left of my nerves and I start to relax underneath the covers. I love Saturday's.

When I turn my phone on I almost scream. It's at fifty-five percent. I can't survive the day with this low of a battery. And it's Saturday! I have nothing better to do than waste time on my phone! Ignoring the fact that my battery is that low this early in the morning, I scroll through my notifications. I see a bunch of them for games - I only downloaded them because Ruby wanted me to - and finally come down to one from 'Prima'. Andy and I aren't actually related, but I put her in as my cousin just to annoy Victoria whenever she glances over my shoulder to see who I'm texting.

'What came first, the chicken or the egg?' I almost burst out laughing. There goes my bad mood.

'The chicken because the egg had to come from somewhere.' I text back and then exit the app. It's six in the morning and knowing her, she probably went to bed at around one after obsessing with Captain Swan for almost the whole night.

Wanting to keep true on my promise to myself last night, I open up Central High's website and scroll down to the spring activities. It takes a while for them to load but when they do, I immediately frown at the very limited choices. Synchronized Swimming, Softball, Track, and Lacrosse. That's it for girls. Well, at least we have more choices than the boys.

I swear all the good sports happen during the fall. I would have loved to do Tennis and Volleyball, but I love Soccer more and there is no way I would give it up willingly for one of the other sports.

Making a quick choice, I click on Softball. It takes me to a separate page but I frown when I read through the information. It says it has both a middle school and a high school team. That won't do. I barely know a thing about Softball and I plan to letter in as many sports as I can before I graduate high school. I want my varsity jacket to be very full and golden (Central High's colors are black and gold).

Synchronized Swimming is out of the question, I don't really know how to swim very well, much less dance in the water.

Track though . . . I'm slow but not that slow I guess. Lydia, a girl from the soccer team, had told me that I should go out for track as I was always in front of the group whenever we ran around the track for our warm ups. Through my puffing of breaths I had told her no because my parents didn't believe I was fast enough and because I knew I would be too slow for it. At the time I also planned to do other things during the spring, but I guess those plans won't matter anymore.

I look at my last choice; Lacrosse. Many of the girls on the soccer team say that Lacrosse is the basically the same thing as soccer, only with a stick. Most of the soccer team also makes up the Lacrosse team. I click on the link and wait for it to load. It doesn't take long and a quick overlook has me learning that they only have a JV team and Varsity. I smile in triumph and click on the details.

Let's see, I'll need a mouth guard and either Lacrosse shoes or Soccer cleats. Practice starts on April first. Victory is mine!

After glancing at the time and realizing that it's seven thirty, I work quickly. I move off my bed again and towards the little wooden box that our neighbor gave me. He's old and has his daughter taking care of him, but he still goes out when he can to make more things out of wood, which drives his daughter crazy. Inside my box, I keep my money.

My money consists of five target gift cards and a twenty dollar bill, one five dollar bill and a couple of ones. After counting the bills I have I come to a total of thirty-three dollars in total. I'm forty-two dollars short - and that's only the activity fee! I don't even know how much the mouth guard will cost, but I'm just glad I won't need to spend a hundred dollars on shoes again. Or rather, I won't need to ask my mother to buy me shoes again. Her eyes practically fell out after buying me my soccer cleats.

I turn towards the gift cards and groan. After a little incident with the self-checkout, I used all the cards at once and then lost track of how much money each one has. They could all have no money for all I know. I'll have to wait until I can call and check. Noise from the shifting of a bed has me scurrying back to my covers, all the money still left out in the open. Floorboards creak as someone walks into the bathroom. The door shuts with the click of the lock.

Doesn't matter if they're starting to wake up, I'll prove them all wrong at one point or another. In all due time, I'll show them that I don't give a fuck what they think, and nor will I ever. Lacrosse is just the beginning.

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