I don’t think I’ll ever be happy and I don’t think I’ll ever stop starting a post with that announcement. When I sit down to write and don’t come with a topic in mind, that’s where my mind goes. For whatever reason, in whatever environment I am in, I am not happy. It’s been years, so I don’t think I ever will be truly happy. Comfortable. I’d settle for comfortable.
I don’t think I’ve ever been completely comfortable in any place I’ve lived. I know it’s a delusion to think or hope that I ever will be. The world isn’t black and white. But… more? I want more? I want better? And I know I can achieve that. I don’t know if I deserve it, but I know it’s out there. It always is.
So when can I stop? When will it be enough? And when I get there, how will I know?
This sounds like an epic intro for a deeply poetic reflective piece. But it is not. It’s just going to be me complaining about my housing experiences. So, I (mostly) lived with my parents all my life until I left for university at almost 19. Life at home was great as a kid and stifling as a teenager. For the usual reasons and some unusual reasons. For a few months I lived with family or friends (about three or four different families) and I just wanted to go back home. I didn’t care that I’d be alone at home and I was ten years old. I wanted that.
When I did get to live at home by myself, I liked it. I still got super excited to tell my mom all about my day when she got home late at night, but I did well by myself during the solitary evenings. Sadly, that’s probably been one of my favorite housing situations. Top three for sure. 
Other than that, it’s just been me living with my brother and parents. It was suffocating as a teen, but most of it didn’t have to be that way. I could have fought back, rebelled, changed my life for the better. But I didn’t. I didn’t go out. I didn’t invite over my two or three friends I had during these years. It was a stifling lonely-in-a-crowd feeling.
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Now, I wrote that amazing intro in the summer of 2019. It’s now a couple weeks from spring in 2020. I didn’t finish writing it because I think I didn’t want to deal with such a heavy question at the time. I had pretty much finished my first stint into education after a bachelor’s degree and an internship. I was ready to slow down. Or so I thought. Now I’m starting to realize that I can’t. For me, it’s either stop or go. There’s no in between. I used to think, and I still did when I wrote the prior section, that it was equally my fault and my parents’ fault that I didn’t enjoy my teenage years living under their roof. Maybe it’s the fact that my mother’s friend just condemned me to God’s wrath for being a rude and disrespectful daughter to my mother, but I don’t believe my unhappy teenage years are equally my and my parents’ faults. I do think there’s more I could have done. I could have rebelled and done what I wanted to, like I said above, but how was I supposed to know that the good outweighed the bad?
My Dragonfly Life 