then and now

i guess when you're younger you think of love as people doing something for you, giving you what you want and what you think you need. and as you grow older it becomes more of a feeling that is close to worry and trying to control the other person for fear of losing, something akin to protection. maybe that's why parents and children perceive love in their own ways and these separate ways don't always go parallel with each other. when my parents were trying to protect me from possibly everything that may have happened to me and when they were showing enormous effort to make me the person in their belief is the best person i can be, i didn't feel loved. they probably didn't feel their love unless they worried something might happen to me and until i went away for college. and for me, someone who loved me was someone who bought me the things i wanted and took me to places i wanted to go, and when that didn't happen, i certainly felt a lack of love. apparently there was no lack of love, nowhere except maybe between my mom and her mom. but who could have figured it out back then, when everyone was so wrapped in their own ways? and what happens now?