A crack in the door

No matter how far I go I will never really leave home.  Even if I wanted to and some people do want to, but most just say they do, because in reality home is too comfortable.  It is the known world, the place where my creator walked on two legs and laid down laws.  Laws that were sometimes incomprehensible, but there none the less.

I imprinted on this place before I knew it existed.  It took me into its bosom and shaped me.  Like one of those hexagonal pegs hammered down into the top of a preschool toy, I was made to fit.

Whatever else is inside of me lies behind the veneer that was lacquered on layer after layer year after year.  Sanded by insiders and outsiders alike, there was never any question of where I belonged.

My position was at the bottom of two highly unique people and at the top of four disappointing little ones.

I was never clean enough, pretty enough, smart enough, good enough.  I was a work in progress.  My job was to be worthy of it all without stepping on any toes. 

I actually walked on my tip toes all the way through elementary school hoping to get rid of my flat feet and become good enough to be a ballerina. But there was no money for dancing lessons for me.  I was a piano player.  Not a very good one, not one anyone wanted to come hear at a recital, but a piano player none the less.

And I had "potential" so they put me in advanced classes where you didn't get to choose what you liked because they already knew.  There was quite a bit of variety though because we moved a lot and each place "knew" different things.

When I left home I was terrified.  Who was going to do my homework, tell me when to eat and sleep, what to think, how to feel? 

Here I was so full of "potential" and all I felt was homesick.  Totally unprepared for a world that saw me as a young adult; I just wanted to be little again and I got stuck.

It has taken the rest of my life to find a crack in the door, but now that I have the light is starting to stream in.