Blood's for Veins, Water's for Survival

From practically birth we are taught that family is everything, that the bloodline of which you are born into triumphs all. We are branded with the belief that anyone who isn't present or "in good standing" with their family must not be a good person. Because everyone is  supposed to be there for  family because you only get one, right?  And besides, "Blood is thicker than Water." Well I agree, family is important. You are supposed to be there for you family, just not at the expense of losing and/or neglecting ones own needs and desires. I love my family immensely but I learned recently that loving them from far doesn't make me a horrid person. I learned that sometimes not being around someone is a concrete way of showing that love. Loving someone in your family from a distance, giving yourself permission not to always be there, is not a showing of ungratefulness or  lack of loyalty or even disrespect, sometimes letting go and/or stepping back is the best way to say I love you. Especially when you find that your beloved family takes pieces of you with their actions that they cannot return. Distance from that kind of hurt can be a simple grasp at sanity. And no-one  likes a lost mind. I also  have come to know that you don't only have one family. There's the one you are obligated to, by DNA I'm assuming, and there is the one you create and love by choice. I personally feel that that second family is the most beneficial and spiritually healing of the two. Alright now, don't make faces, just think about it. A group of strangers who don't know you from a hole in the wall come into your life and impact it in such a way that you cannot imagine life without them. They may not  know everything about you immediately but as one of my beautiful, non-biological sisters said to me a short time ago , "Time is a funny gift no doubt". And in time, those people, those strangers can come to know you better than you know yourself. There is something to be said for loving someone so deeply, so freely, so viscerally that even blood couldn't make you any closer. In my mind it is a profound paradise to have a wonderful cluster of ladies and some guys who love me in such a way. Not because some aunt at some reunion told them we were family but because when they look into my eyes or hear my voice,my laugh or even my cry the first thing they can think of is home. That my friends, a blessing. A world where giving someone the option to hurt you, but relying on them not to, where looks are conversations and obligation is replaced with "just because" that is the world my family, the one I choose, who chose me right back, exists. I only hope that everyone's version  of family can thrive in that world one day, until then, inhale,exhale and good luck.