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chapter five people are stories
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When people die, they turn into stories. All the little things they did in life become the big things and are put into a time capsule in their loved ones' hearts. Every time someone opens that capsule, those stories are told and it's like that person is still there for them. And Izzy Windsor believed that people were just stories in the end, nothing more, nothing less.
Her mother, Julia Windsor, was one of those stories that would always haunt her, reminding her that she would never amass to be anything as amazing as her. Julia was a starlet. The spotlight found her, she didn't seek it out. People just adored her. They loved to hear everything about her life, and Izzy couldn't blame them. She wanted to be just like Julia. At least, she did when the woman was still alive. But after she died, the stories of her mother no longer inspired her to be like her, instead, they filled her with dread. The desire to be like her mother quickly turned into a guideline for who she was expected to be, and suddenly all this pressure was put on her to become the carbon copy of the deceased model.
Izzy had tried for so long after her mother died to live up to her memory. She tried styling her hair like her and wearing her clothes, but she just felt lost. She tried to care about the cheer meetings, but going to them only made her want to pull out her hair. She just didn't care, and she realized she never actually did. She realized a lot of the things she did were for her mom, and when she died, the inspiration to do them burned out.
She didn't want to be this person. She didn't want to walk down runways or attend galas, she wanted to stay in her room and paint. That was what Izzy wanted to do for a living. She wanted to paint, but her father wanted her to be her mother. There was just one problem—Julia's story had ended while Izzy was still writing hers.
Nobody understood it. Nobody understood her and she was sure of it. No matter who she told, they all looked at her as if she had spoken blasphemy. They wanted her to be Julia. They wanted her to do what they told her to do. They wanted to control her. But Izzy hated picking what personality she should put on when she approached different people. She hated being their puppet. She just wanted to be free from the entrapment of the pressure suffocating her.
