I think a great deal about what it is to have a family, to take a place in what passes for the real world. For all that I'm only twenty-one, this is something that's very important to me, and something that I need to think about, and need to understand. I need to know what I want, what I need, what I think is the way that is right for me to do things.

To a certain extent, my definitions are in terms of negatives, things I cannot consider doing - things that I feel are ultimately destructive. And to another extent, I'm aware that the absolute ideals I have are impractical or in other ways unworkable, and so I've given those over to a certain extent - to only say that moving towards something closer to those than further away from them would be a good thing.

I do not limit the concept of "Family" to my blood kin - to a certain extent, among my blood kin I felt perpetually on the outside, and unwanted, so that may very well be natural. I will give this to my family, though; as a small child, I learned many things that I think have done me well to learn.

I never learned to fear the concept of knowledge. My parents read to me before I knew how, and even afterwards, making the act of the reading a bonding experience, something that connected me to them. Many of my childhood indiscretions consisted entirely of trying to find ways of reading after my parents were certain that I should be asleep.

But even granted that, and the fact that I was advanced in school because of that, I never had the sense of superiority among my classmates that some gifted students develop - not until I was in a situation where arrogance was the only armor I could grow to protect myself from the stigma of being new, of being the one who broke the bell curve, of being different. I grew up in a place where there were different races, different levels of income, all in the same school - it never occurred to me that there was a real difference between myself and Lionel, who had dark skin, aside from the fact that he was male and played the trombone, and I played flute. And the fact that he played trombone much better than I played flute.

I never learned how to be afraid of being female, of my own body, or of the bodies of others. The concept of nudity never dawned on me as taboo, and the concept of touch never struck me as obscene. I was always a cuddly person, willing to curl up with people I trusted and share their warmth and their presence, and, indeed, quite content to be so. I have not changed so much that I have lost this entirely - I have instead lost much of my capacity to trust, which I regret. I never felt that being female made me weak, or inferior - I tutored students in math instead of whining that I didn't understand it.

I learned things that I would rather not have learned as well, which have made me harder than I might have been otherwise. I learned how cruel children are to the strangers among them, and that adults' cruelty is only subtler. I learned, though I have tried to unlearn this, that nothing I could do was adequate, that my own accomplishments were never quite good enough to satisfy. I learned how to make people do what I wanted them to do without asking it of them, and how to resist the same attempts against myself. I learned connivance and misdirection to protect myself against my peers, and I forgot how to cry where anyone could see. I learned that love is an excuse for something wanted more often than it is a gift.

These are things I would rather not have learned, for while I needed to learn them to survive, they made me hard and untrusting. They are not lessons that I would wish to force my children to, when I have them, even though they must learn them eventually - but as I have learned those lessons, I can comfort those who are learning them and all the pain that comes with thim.

I want to raise my children in a place with trees, where there is a garden where I might try growing vegetables - that being a task for patience that I may very well utilize, and the small steps towards sufficiency are worthwhile, if only for the lessons they teach. I want to raise my children in a place with other children their age, of all different backgrounds, of parents with different interests, who share some of the same ideals as I do. I want to know the schools will treat them well, and to be able to show them how to teach themselves the many things that the schools will not.

I want a tribe, of sorts, a family that is not about blood ties but about the love that might or might not fall along ties of blood. My family may not all live together - I imagine the sorts who I would want as a part of that family would drive each other mad if forced to do so - but to live near, where we could speak with each other often, would be good. I am at my best when my family is near me, even if I do not take advantage of that presence at all.

I want a core to that family, people willing to be partners to myself and my partner, to share the diffiulties and the joys of living, live near me, share my love. I am not bound to the concept of the one love, overriding all others, that no other could supplement - and I want those I love, have as lovers, to be free to have their own partners. Whether they would join in this inner core or not, I do not know - I would prefer it, to know that my children, whether born to my blood or not, have loving parents about.

I want to know that I can work and know that my family is there, to know that if I need someone, I can find someone, that I have my partners in all things with me and near me. I want to know that those outside the core of this family will be there, like the siblings I feel them to be, though on the outside, able to look in and visit and hold those who need holding and accept that love from other people.

And even as I want this community of people who can accept the thought of loving more than one, who can accept the thought of the philosophies I hold and the people I hold dear, I do not want isolation - I want to know people outside that community, to have them to talk to, to know, to question the things I no longer question, to keep me thinking about why I am where I am, why the family I have built is what it is. I do not want an isolation that keeps my thought stagnant, nor do I want to feel I need to hide what and who I am from the world. I want to know there are people of different religious beliefs from mine, different philosophies.

I want those with me to be free to choose to not believe what I believe, to not follow the gods I follow, to eat zucchini even if I think they're crazy for it. I want the association to be one of choice rather than duty, of love rather than law, for all that for those who would be in my central family, I would like to have some legal system organzied to make certain any children are provided for, no matter who their blood parents are.

I want to build the seed of a modern tribe, seed it through a place and bring in those who would want such a thing, letting those who do not want it stay outside its boundaries and be unthreatened by it. There will be those who are threatened by such a thing in and of itself, though - those who find the theology offensive, those who find the concept of non-monogamy to be obscene, those who for one reason and another do not wish to extend the tolerance to the family I want to build that the family would extend to them.

I want to build a family that can withstand these assaults upon itself without dying or withering in the pain of it, which can plan for its generations, which can exist openly without threat of harm done to it because of practices that are not considered normal by the mainstream. I want to live a normal life - free to live, and to love, and to work in the work I consider mine, and let my partners and my siblings work in the work they consider theirs, supporting us all when we need it, leaving us be when we want it, letting us stand alone whenw e need to prove our strength.

Perhaps in time, I would even like this all to be legal in some way that the world can accept, to be able to give my partners, whoever they may turn out to be, the place in the law of the land that they would have in my heart, to celebrate what we have - a family-tribe of many people, consenting to live and love together or separately or however they wish, but willing to live in peace.

It is a large dream, but, perhaps, one I can achieve.