For the longest time

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to get married, have three children, and live the happy home life I didn't truly have. I always wondered why both of my older sisters wanted neither marriage nor children of their own; I thought it was bizarre and wrong that two women would not want that typical, sugar-sweet family life.

It hit me only recently that perhaps they responded to our home life differently than I did. All three of us were under great pressure growing up, and it didn't help that my parents' loveless marriage frequently led to violently angry arguments. Psychology argues that the three of us should have grown up to be complete and utter messes, drug-addicts or alcoholics. Instead, we've all had varying degrees of success in our lives.

The experience still scarred us all deeply, however. I grew up idolizing happy marriages and promising myself that my children would never suffer as I did. My sisters, on the other hand, shunned marriage and children for themselves. Again, I found this mindset foreign to my way of thinking, and to America's way of thinking as a whole.

But now, I look at their beliefs with a little more clarity. My solution to the unhappiness of our home was to build a better one for the future; my sisters' solutions appeared to rely on not ever taking the risk of building one for themselves. My parents' relationship nurtured in me a painfully intense desire for true love; my sisters appear to avoid repeating the same mistakes by avoiding marriage.

The eldest of us three, however, is the only one to have actually committed herself to relationships (as far as I know. I don't think S. has been in a relationship with anyone, but I could be wrong). Her current relationship is, in my eyes, truly something special. For as long as I've been alive, J. has always had to look after me (and believe me, I was NOT easy to handle) and bear the burden of being an adult when she should have been enjoying her youth. But with her boyfriend, she doesn't have to carry the all responsibilities on her own shoulders; her boyfriend knows what it's like to be the product of a torn household as well as being the eldest of three. He is, in almost every respect, her perfect partner, and I have never seen her happier in my 22 years (on October 13!) of life. They've made living a shared life while still retaining independence and their individual personalities look disgustingly easy. Yet she still refuses to consider marriage, and I can't help but believe that this mindset is one of the scars left on her by her experiences. Our shared experiences.

J. is six years older than me. If I can remember the shouting, the throwing of dishes, the driving off in cars, then what does she remember? What does S. remember?

Not much good, it's safe to say.

I bring this up because only yesterday, Fadiya and I were discussing how we used to think that the idea of not wanting to get married was freakish and abnormal. We talked about how we, as little girls, wanted to grow up and get married. Then, we grew up. We grew up paranoid, suspicious, mistrustful. We grew up scarred, scared. We grew up afraid to love and be loved. And our childish conceptions of love changed, our ideas of marriage changed. Suddenly, I understand that one good marriage will not automatically undo the mess left by one horrible marriage. Suddenly, I wonder whether or not I'm even capable of maintaining a relationship at all, in any shape or form. I'm a self-diagnosed Avoidant, and though I turned out well enough by societal standards, I'm still carrying a lot of baggage as a result of my childhood. I may have to rewrite my own assumptions of what I wanted as a kid, because as a pseudo-adult, my childhood aspirations are far from what I want now.

I dreamed big, as a kid.