I have this memory from when I was seven years old. I was crying in front of my orange and white Fisher-Price doll house. I couldn’t understand why I felt this void in my chest, why my sister and my parents got along the best. I got tired of playing make-believe. I put all my hope into a dollhouse that I wished would come to life. With the trope of a perfect family, where love was more than just implied. Where my presence wasn’t a burden, where the sound of an opening garage door didn’t make me nervous. And I put all my hope in a Cinderella song, where a wish is more powerful than a knight. So through smoke surrounded hope, I threw my lifeline of dreams to the sky, and the summer breeze let them coast to a place where teardrops make starlights. I prayed that the sky would read the salt in my tears, my hope despite my fear, and my deep longing to be anywhere but here. And I ached and I ached until I put all my hope in a God I didn’t know. I begged him to read the glaze in my eyes, and clutched the hole where love should reside
before I asked him why I felt so confined. Shouldn’t a home feel safe inside? He gave me solace, in the quiet of night, and said my house lacked a home, a room for my soul.

So I’ve dreamed of growing old since I was seven. Dreamed of a place, so peaceful it could be heaven, where my feet could run and jump and dance, without playing a weighty game of chance. My smile would be a blooming bouquet and in the breeze, my fears would drift away. But at the end of the day, I was seven. I was crying along in my room in front of my orange and white Fisher-Price doll house, begging whoever in the universe was listening to grow me up. I begged them to have mercy on my young and tired eyes, begged them to let me leave this house of lies.

So since then, I’ve longed for the day when I can finally pack up and say,

“I’m going to find my home, the place where I can be me, and I can be known.”