I WANT(ed) that

All I ever wanted as a kid was a big beautiful house to invite my friends over to. I wanted to grow up in a lovely neighborhood with sidewalks on the streets where the houses were. I wanted to know my neighbors and to have a crush on the boy next door. I wanted to have a back yard that disappeared into a forest that I could wear a path through from exploring with my friends. I wanted to have my first kiss in that same forest with a beautiful, tall boy who I would later lose my virginity to in my childhood bedroom. I wanted to go off to college and bring home a new guy from far away who fate allowed me to meet and fall in love with. I wanted him to come home to my warm family and home and to meet my Dad and cousins and to just fit right in.

I wanted to live in a place I could feel safe and secure in. I wanted to have family dinners on Sunday and an open minded Mom and Dad who talked about art and politics and who hosted book clubs and drank wine and went on dates together who I would occasionally catch kissing and holding hands because they were still so in love. I wanted to see love modeled for me all around and represented in the home I lived in, the food I ate, the conversations we had, the activities we did. I only realize now what the big beautiful house represented to me. It represented far reaching love that touched every part of my existence. The kind of love that makes your parents stay together and set aside their differences for the benefit of the whole family,  so that their daughters and sons know life (not just a few intermittent days) with their father and mother. The kind of love that makes adults live and work like adults so their children can come home to an actual home they can be proud and not ashamed of. The kind of love that embraces people's differences and welcomes would be outsiders that their children have befriended. The kind of love that makes people have Sunday dinners without TV and cellphones. The kind of love that allows children to be open with their parents about sex and relationships and everything else in between. The kind of love that need not utter a word through sobbing and tears but only knows a warm embrace in moments of despair.

Instead I got no father and a family of JW's that preached love but practiced exclusion at every opportunity they got.