OnePlusOne, you are processing your feelings of loss, of not having the sort of childhood family you would have wanted, and that is healthy even if it does seem nuts to you that you are looking at bereavement threads Actually it sounds like a pretty good idea for a way to get your feelings out!
Perhaps a reason you have said previously that you want your parents to die could be that you feel a loss similar to bereavement from death but you can't quite process it because they are not actually dead, so in your brain it 'does not compute'. If they actually died it would feel more 'logical' and 'easier' to allow yourself to feel the loss that you feel already. At the moment maybe you feel a bit 'stupid' to feel the way you do so won't let yourself fully feel it?
What you said about "..face pressed up against the glass..." reminded me of something I felt years ago. I used to go out with my friends in my parents' village and walk home slowly, putting off going back from where I felt a sense of connectedness with my friends to a house where I just didn't feel anything, it seemed sterile of emotion. People had their lights on in their houses and the lights gave out a warm glow. I felt a sense of I'm out here in the cold and dark and you are in there in the warm, not just a warm temperature but a warm emotional atmosphere with your families where you all feel 'together' but I am shut out and can't be a part of that.
Then before I met my birthmother I went to have a look at the house she grew up in because I had the address. I didn't think I would feel anything except fascination. It was a big solid house with lots of georgian sort of windows. I was surprised how big it was, a big house for a large family. I was struck by how solid and impenetrable it looked and that I felt a sense of not being able to get in. Then I started to cry and feel angry and I didn't know why. When I thought about it, it was because I imagined my birthmother with her own family, not including me, living their happy family life without a care about me and feeling shut out of it and that I would never be a part of it.
Like you, my main motivation has been to want to belong in an emotionally warm group. I've felt like this for as long as I can remember.
Once I accepted that I was never going to feel like this with any of my relatives I was able to search for these types of relationships and groups elsewhere. Like I wrote in another post, I can trace all my happiest times, and why I am happier now than I have ever been, to times when I have been in some kind of group and felt I belonged. I think it is REALLY important, especially to women, and if you don't have it, finding it will make a HUGE difference. It is really worth working on it.
I have this dumb theory that back in caveman times, while the men went out and hunted food, the women all looked after their children together and supported each other and learnt from each other. As society has progressed we seem to have become more isolated in some ways but still have this natural instinct from caveman times. I think Mumsnet is a cyber substitute for sharing our jobs as mothers and supporting each other in real life. I love being part of it. I love being part of anything really - playgroups, my music group, my old work gang, my DH's 'gang' of old friends, my DH's family - brothers, wives and children, the people I am in contact with on Facebook, joining dumb groups on Facebook. I look for this sense of belonging all the time and take pleasure in any little bit I feel.
Since leaving home I have kept joining groups/classes/trying to get in with friend's 'gangs', often with bad results because I just didn't fit in or didn't like it and it really upset me. It scared me to join new things every time but something forced me to keep doing it until I found places/people I felt comfortable with. I made an idiot of myself so many times and felt so stupid but I kept doing it, and got less and less scared of doing it. It was SO worth it in the end because now I feel I have found what I need in my life and I have a sense of satisfaction that I have done it all myself and built a life for myself where I feel like I have a life rather than just existing, DESPITE the shit start I had and how people have 'tried' to make me feel crap about myself and 'taught' me that life was crap and I shouldn't expect anything good in life because it is all shit. Just because their lives were shit and they have an unconscious or conscious urge to inflict their view of life being shit on other people doesn't mean you have to have a shit life to make them feel they were correct in their view of life being shit.
God I talk bollocks , I don't know what I'm going to write really until I write it! Ignore me if it seems like gibberish! It helps my own thought processes to write it! Sometimes I do a post about a problem I'm having with my feelings then feel like nobody cares because nobody responds directly to me. But then while thinking about what I would say to other people about their stuff on here I think Wow, I should apply that to myself and it might be the answer for me too! It really helps me because it makes me look at things from different angles. I know that if someone doesn't have personal experience of a particular thing I've said then they probably won't have things they can say about it, and I know that part of depression or emotional conflict involves difficulty thinking outside of all your own intense and jumbled stuff in your own head, so I understand why people don't always respond directly to me. Sometimes what is important is just expressing what you are feeling in words. It is one form of expression and can help release the feelings. Expressing myself with writing seems to work the best for me, more than punching pillows etc.