My Kind of Success

I had always taken family for granted.  Up until I was sixteen I had the picture perfect family.  Or at least that's how it looked like on the outside.  I lived in a nice house in a perfect little neighborhood, had parents who had been married for 23 years, and went to church every Sunday.  My dad was the doctor, my mom was the youth minister.  It seemed like we had it all together.  People from the outside didn't know my dad came home drunk more than half of the week.  They didn't know I stayed up countless nights listening to my parents scream at each other.  I never learned to take pride in my family, and I never understood people that did.  My house and the "family" that lived in it was hell to me.  And honestly, the day my dad walked out for good was the day I finally started learning what a real family was and definitely what it was not.  Now I'm not the kind of person that likes to just throw my sob story out there to make people feel bad for me.  I hate that actually.  But going through this has made me realize what I want in life; what's important to me.  It's family.  But not the kind of family I came to know throughout my life.  I value what a real family is supposed to be, and I value loyalty to that.  What I want more than anything in life is to have a family like I never got to experience as a kid.  Not a picture perfect family, but one that sticks together and loves each other through the good and the bad.

I know to a lot of people this may not sound like much.  And if we would've been talking about this a couple years ago I would've thought what I'm saying is cliche and kind of stupid.  But it's what I want, and it's what I dream of.  It's what will bring me true happiness.  The most important thing to me is finding a husband that will be the kind of dad to my children that I always wished I had.  And I know many people would say that an eighteen year old girl in her first year at a big college shouldn't be thinking about who she's gonna be marrying.  But I couldn't disagree more.  I'm not about wasting my time, and finding a good husband is way too important to me to just put myself out there for anyone that shows an interest in me.  If I can't picture myself being with someone in the far future, I won't stay with them.  It's just common sense to me.  I want to raise my kids in a loving, no judgment home.  The love I received from my dad was always conditional and came with strings attached.  And while my mom is an awesome person, she's always been too strict to ever talk to about real problems.  I want my kids to know that they can talk to me about anything, and I'll never judge them.  These are things that are just second nature to a lot of parents, and that's the way it should be.  But coming from a home where this was never established has given me perspective to see just how crucial it is to having the family I dream of.  

Having this family is just the small scale of what I want in my life.  Not only do I want this family for myself, but I dream of bringing it to others who don't receive it.  I've always wanted to adopt one or two kids.  Ever since I was really little I knew I wanted to do this someday.  There are so many kids out there who have things a million times worse than I ever did.  And if I can play a part in showing just one of these kids what being part of a true family feels like, then I'd say I've been pretty successful in life.  I'm a psychology major, and I dream of being a school psychologist in an inner-city school.  I know I won't be able to solve every kid's problems and make everything okay for them, but it's the little things that count.  And yeah, that's pretty much as cliche as it gets, but it really is true.  A lot of these kids have no one rooting for them.  Sometimes all you need is someone on your team.  Someone to listen to the bad stuff and celebrate the good stuff.  This is what family is.  Family doesn't have to be contained in your own home.  I think family can be an action.  It's reaching out to those who may not ever know how it feels to be part of one.  This is my dream.  It's what I think about every day.  I've learned that family is valuable and no one should ever have to go through life not knowing what it truly means.