Family is where the heart is

I come from a family of two parents that met scandously, and married too young.  My mom, a young blonde from a rough childhood who wanted to have children of her own only to prove to herself she was nothing like her mother.  My dad, a young entrepreneur with a drinking problem and a need to take care of a woman.

After my parents’ divorce, my dad remarried the same year, my mom struggled to find a job.  I fell in deep to my family of friends and did my best to manage living with my mother and her newfound freedom.

My mom always told me, life was “hard”, and that I’d need to find a man to support me.  My dad always told me I’m “pretty enough” to be picky finding a man.  My two brothers married their high school sweethearts almost immediately after graduation and purchased houses and had babies. 

I still can’t understand why.  It didn’t work for mom and dad.  In fact, 13 years after the divorce of my parents, they still openly slander the other.  The other that they openly vowed to have and to hold, for all of eternity or however that bullshit goes.  I didn’t understand it when I was 12, and I understand it even less at 25.  

So instead of marrying the first guy that looked at me twice, and getting knocked up with two of his kids just so that he could leave me for his sister’s bestfriend- I traveled.  I spent pre-high school graduation and well into my twenties skipping towns and absorbing any and all experiences I could.  Queen of relocating.  And it’s not that I’m a cynic to love.  It’s that I’m incredibly misunderstood, which has got to be the only thing my family has ever taught me.  I knew that one day I would fall madly in love, and I wanted to make sure my restless soul was exhausted by then- ready to settle.

So, I found my heart in an old friend of mine, and I moved back home and I’m happily settling down at rapid speeds.   I was so eager to share this with my family, because we finally have something in common; it’s all that they’ve been screaming at me the whole time.

But instead, my family treats me like the flighty gypsy they always have.  The free spirit, the independent thinker, “the mover”.  They refuse to love something until they see it can be loved by another.  But it’s just something you deal with I guess.  I’m grateful for my family of friends, and I’m grateful for my boyfriend’s parents, and I’m grateful for the family I’ve found.

“Family” is subjective I suppose, just like “home”.