Today is Easter, another holiday which fills my newsfeeds on Facebook or Snapchat with pictures of families celebrating and loving each other throughout the whole day. I am on campus right now, and all I see are happy young adults with their parents celebrating.

I am so jealous of that. I am so jealous of you if you grew up with a close-knit family. I know it's not healthy to be jealous, but I really can not help it. Maybe that's because I have never had a real family or maybe it is because I had a small one that faded away into this little family of three.

I want nothing more than to be like those families, to hang out with my cousins and get to have barbecues with my aunts and uncles. But, for me, that is never how it is going to be. For me, I spend most holiday's alone in some way or another and I suppose that's okay I am privileged still in many ways but it is definitely not the way I wish it would be. This is just how it is having a small family, a family with non-matching schedules, a family that fights non-stop. People keep asking why I stayed and did not go home for the holidays, truth is there is no reason to. I would just sit alone, like I always do.

Maybe it would not hurt as much if it had always been this way but I used to feel like I had a family. A small one still but not quite as small as it is now. I remember spending holidays together when I was little, but even then something within it felt fake. Maybe, it was because of all those fake smiles or all the awkward silences through the long lectures at dinner.

Regardless, I know that for me, I will always have a small family but I hope that for my younger cousins and my future children, that they get to grow up with something more. That they get to play with cousins around their own age or go out with their aunts and uncles down to the store. I hope that they never feel as alone as I did, sitting by myself under the tree on Christmas Eve. I hope that they have something more.