addie and lots of coffee.

So here's the thing, I grew up in a family of people who give.

We are huge gift givers.

When I was little and my parents were starting out we got all homemade gifts, my mother would sew us toys (I still have most of them) or we would get homemade paints and play doughs. When my dad started to make more money sometimes he would bring my mom and I flowers- even just a rose or two- and sometimes just because. For birthdays I sometimes got more then I ever hoped for, my parents would go out of their way during holidays- even if it was just one object.

Eventually things progressed to more gifts, we always have given gifts in my family as an expression of love. I grew up never being told I love you- rarely, i think I could count it on one hand until recently, it was almost suggested in material things.

love = what you give a person, how often you give it and the thought you put into it.

I know this sounds twisted and honestly I never realized how objects were replacing affection and love for the majority of my life until I started to earn my own money in the last 10 years and saw the underlying financial objectives.

And I've only just recently realized the way I was raised and how its affected me as an adult. I think there is actually a definition of a 'type' of love from some self help book and they call us 'givers'. Embarrassing as this is to admit. Ive only recently started to believe the value of a gift or the time that it took to make it has little weight in the emotional bond or love you have or someone has for you. Even my grandparents who literally were in poverty spent every last dime on their grandchildren at holidays. We were flat out spoiled (and really still are in some cases).

Never has this been more evident for me but on a birthday once.

The guy I was dating and I had been together about three months when my birthday hit- not only did he not give me a gift like I hoped for, he didn't give me a card or even really acknowledge it was my birthday- he didn't do or give anything.

I was hurt, really very hurt actually.. maybe even crushed.

I assumed this was his way of somehow stating something obvious in a passive manner; that 'he is not that into you' moment in a relationship when you realize hes trying to tell you in a nice way its over. It wasn't until later that summer when we visited his parents and his birthday rolled around I understood why there was such a lack of ... action.

See, its taking me 27 fucking years to realize that we are raised with every.single.word.and.every.single.action. having a different definitions and meanings. As a result it creates chaos often personally for us out of sheer lack of a miss-definiton. For his family holidays and birthdays mean almost nothing- they have little weight. They don't get each other anything- not even a card. He told me from the time he was in his teens on his parents never celebrated and he was taught holidays and birthdays were only for small children.

I don't know what the point of any of this really is, except I've finally started to get something about other people and myself. Maybe I can't quite put my finger on it but I know its there, even if only in an abstract manner.

I'm starting to learn not to take things so personally; in most cases what happens isn't as much about you as you think it is in the moment, we all just have sometime very different definitions for the same words.