The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. -Moulin Rouge

I thought about that quote everyday day before I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Sometimes I found myself awake for hours fantasizing of what it would be like for someone to actually love me. My entire seventeen years have been spent endlessly desiring what it would feel like to love and be loved in return. Just a glimpse of pure, sanctified affection would fulfill the numbness and repair the wounds inflicted on my heart for more than a decade.

All a foster child ever dreams about is to love and be loved in return.

I was given a tour of Saint John’s Divine cathedral two days ago. To have something so striking and beautiful within my reach and visible to my unworthy eyes is something that I will never forget. As I gazed in awe at the vibrant stained glass windows and Gothic architecture it came to me. THIS was what it must be like to be in love. My fingers ran across the 250 year old limestone charred from a fire that happened some 100 years ago, and it not only tickled my fingertips, but my very soul.

Looking up at the Roman arches stretching across the ceiling I had the urge to not just cry but sob. These walls have been witness to endless suffering and endless recovery, and maybe the same feeling that I had being near something so magnificent is what it would feel like to have love. Someone who cares without a hidden agenda and sees through my exterior into my being.

Later that day I walked into the possibility project. I hugged the men who have not only became my teachers but also my role models. I hugged the woman who became my mother when I had none. I realized I felt the same emotion as when I peered through the gigantic rose window. It struck me that that feeling of peace, acceptance and most importantly love, had been mine since I joined this program. I had been too cold, broken and scarred to even realize it. This time I felt like crying not because of the love I lacked from my biological family, but rather the love I now possess.

I no longer have to fantasize in bed about being loved. I no longer have to search for affection in all the wrong places. I now see that the quote from Moulin Rouge is the most truthful composition of words that has ever been spoken. And finally I have a piece of that joy all to myself.