You lost yours so you disposed yourself to find a new one. A family. After grieving over something you are not in control of, you admitted yourself to their home. A new wing. Hesitant at first, you swallowed the sediments of pride in your throat. At first, it was just a normal sleepover. Two to three times in a week, you spend your night on their abode, on their children’s bed. Until it became, four to five, you’ve already forgotten the way you put the lock in your house that you always check when you got home if it’s still in the same position as if that would determine if someone tried to break in. Until it became 6 to everyday, you’re finally were living there.

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It was unofficial. You just started sleeping and waking up there. You own clothes in their built-in closet, your pair of shoes on their racks and your laundry swimming inside the washing machine with their own. They’ve accepted you as their child even if they did not see you as a child. They let you call them what their children call them. You started to feel at home. You put your feet on the sofa, eat their groceries, use their toiletries, switch on the TV when you want to watch and connect your phone to the speaker when you want to listen to music loud. They let you. They introduced to the extended family, included you in the family gatherings, and counted you in the family budget. They treated you well. But as time passed, it occurred to you that you could never be a part of them. In a family dinner, you found yourself dead in their laugh as they joked about a family memory. You think you’ve gained enough confidence to take the last piece of every food you share but you still are lacking. You realized you become uneasy in their family outing because, well, you don’t really belong there.

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You laid low. You try to find other people’s company. But they’re still the best, all you found is mediocrity. You thought over the whole thing over in your head, assessed each and every one of them thinking, if you already had break the walls. At first you thought so, you thought you can already see through them then you reached out your hand and felt something against your palm. A wall. As think as an iceberg but as clear as a shallow river. You were just close enough to see it but not to touch it.

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You backed off.

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Then all things broke loose. At first, it was every day. Then it became six days, you found a job. Then it became five to four days. You started going out with your personal connections. Then three to two days. You welcomed yourself again in your old house. The lock is ajar but you don’t care because there’s nothing important in their aside from bad memories. Then you finally went home. You lie in your old bed thinking what happened to that relationship. You scratched your head as if that might conjure the answer. You scratched because you’re now angry at yourself and you still don’t have an answer. You stopped scratching. You stopped thinking.

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Now, as you are writing this piece, you look back again to everything. Memories flooded and overwhelmed you. You were happy back then. Without scratching your head, you found the answer to your question long before. A family is a stronghold. It’s a circle without any break meaning no one can get out and no one gets in. Even a golden ticket won’t bring you in, being catapulted through its high wall would be a lousy idea and breaking the ties is like hammering a diamond with your bare hands. Now, taking yourself back from there to here, you look around your house. There are still the bad memories you took care of. Well, you smile and thought that without those, you’ll never know what the good memories are.