I want to go somewhere that's so dark that I can sit under the stars and see the Milky Way like I did when I was a child. I remember it most vividly on a trip to Arizona around 1970. I want to see the Milky Way again. 

I want spend one night with my family again. Just my parents and my brother, just for one night. My immediate family survived a lot of shit together, and it made us extremely close. While I love all my extended family and my friends and all, I will still never forget what it was like in Texas in 1977, sitting at our dining room table playing cards, because we were in a new place where we didn't belong and all we had was each other and the good times around that table. 

I want to sit with all my pets that have gone on, just one more time, and tell them what good babies they are and how much joy and happiness they have brought me and bury my face in their fur and hold them close just one last time. 

Similarly, I want to see my friends and family that have passed, just once more, to selfishly enjoy their company and relive the things that made them special to me. Just to hear their voice again, and to get whatever special, unique thing from them that I can't get from anyone else. 

I want to be in love the way it is meant to be. The way it is in the beginning, when you can't wait to see them and you melt from across the room or at the sound of their voice. The way it is before all the old fears and the thoughts of what others have done ruin it, and create walls and traps and sharp edges. I want the feeling that only pure, true love can bring you. 

I want to relax, to feel calm and safe and carefree one more time before I die. I'm afraid that nothing, no drug, no material thing, no theology, no self help book will ever get that back for me. The longer you live, the more responsibility and worry you accumulate, the more you need to plan and then have contingency plans for when those plans don't work. I want to feel the way I felt as a child, dozing in the back seat of the car at night, while your parents drove home and all you could see out the window were the stars and the occasional streetlight, and you felt safe and warm and like you were going home, because that's exactly what you were. 

I want to feel comfortable in my own skin. I want to feel the way I know I'm supposed to feel, but can't ever quite get there. I want to live without constantly searching my physical self for flaws and imperfections, and judging myself against impossible expectations. I want to be accepted and forgiven and loved for what I am, or maybe at least recognize that I already am and shut that part of my brain up that tells me I'm hideous and failing everyone in my life on a constant basis. 

I want to just once feel like I belong somewhere, that I fit in, that I'm not alone. That's the worst thing. Feeling like no one really understands you and never will. Feeling like you are the only one that thinks and feels the way that you do, and that you're never part of something bigger. Not like you're a stranger in a strange land, different from everyone else and unconnected, adrift in lifeless sea, with no sight of land. 

Just one more time I want to feel like I'm home again, whatever that might be.