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If there was anything Elizabeth Aimee Tunwald could say to her diary to show her disdain for her childhood, it would be nothing.

Nothing a middle finger couldn't sum up.

Sure, it hadn't been all that bad. It was pretty normal in comparison to some other's childhoods. Her parents hadn't been involved in drug and alcohol abuse. She hadn't wound up in foster care. She hadn't had a motherload of siblings to care for. She'd always been fed and bathed and had a roof over her head.  

So, honestly, it seemed pretty unappreciative to wish that hers could have just been a little better. But it was also a little justified in a way, because while there were people with childhoods that had been worse than hers, there were also people with childhoods that far outweighed the balance of fair. 

Like the children with loving parents.

But hey, maybe that was just her 'Ungratefulness' showing through. With the amount of times her mother called her that, she wouldn't be surprised if the woman were going to rename her with the adjective.  

It was better than being called Elizabeth. 

Eliza (as she preferred to be called for numerous reasons, including because 'Elizabeth' was a boring name,) clamped the cover of her childhood diary shut as if she were trying to close a door on it. Reading it for a little over an hour was enough for her. All of her suppressed emotions had come up from their graves to say hello to her and she definitely didn't need that at this time.

'This time' meaning that she was twenty-one years old and still at her parents house, no where near where she thought she would be at this age. 

Meaning, she had not progressed in life whatsoever. 

She briskly threw the book across the room like a frisbee, watching as it hit the bookshelf she was aiming for and fell to the floor with a thud. The cover flopped back open to reveal fluttering pages worth of her own writing, which had neatened over the years. When it had finally stilled, open on a page that was dated sometime in 2001, Eliza slumped back into her bed and redirected her attention elsewhere.

Her gaze flickered along walls of blue covered in magazine cut-outs and posters and drawings, past the old broken TV that lay discarded in the corner of her room and then across toys that sat on floating wall shelves, waiting for the day they would be played with again. 

Which reminded her that she should probably rid herself of them, seeing as how she wasn't going to be playing with them and she didn't have any plans for future children that would, either.

Her eyes left the toys as their expectant gazes on her began to make her feel guilty for having them there with no one to play with them, (she blamed that on Toy Story,) and they avoided the sight of her messy bedroom floor as they shot up towards the roof. 

There they found the fading glow in the dark stars she had placed there when she was about ten years old. They hung up there, somehow still sticking to the roof, like some sort of ancient artefacts in a museum.  As far as she remembered, she had put them there so she could pretend like she was somewhere else - a desert in Arizona, laying on a sleeping bag and staring up at the stars. 

Her naivety in thinking she would be able to survive camping in the middle of nowhere as a ten year old girl gave insight to what a big dreamer she was.

Was being the keyword. 

Luckily, as the years passed and the stickers faded (and her common sense began to kick in,) her younger self found other methods of escape - mostly in the form of media. A much safer alternative to sleeping out in the desert. 

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