Family

Family. Sometimes it can be a force of great strength. An impossible barrier to get passed when everyone's working together to accomplish a goal. Sometimes, though, family is a source of great pain. When one person breaks, the rest follow suit without choice. It's a large scale domino effect that could be impossible to overcome. You try your hardest not to let the cycle continue, but then something happens: one too many empty promises, one too many broken hearts, one too many criticsms, the list of possibilities endless. The inevitable occurs and you find yourself backed into a wall by the person you thought was always going to protect and love you unconditionally. You try to help the person, but time after time your efforts are proved unsuccessful and unappreciated. You want nothing more than to give up and quit as the person standing before you turns into a complete stranger, but your obligation to protect and love them no matter how many times they screw up and are wrong doesn't allow you to walk away. To give up on them. So instead, you take the easy way out, and keep quiet. The silence begins to slowly kill you each and every day, and you pull away from everyone.

Suddenly the distance has gotten so wide and you find social situations terrifying. Even a simple phone call makes you anxious. Small talk is unbearable as you stand there paralyzed with fear barely making it through the "How are yous?" Finally, you've had enough and retreat to the back of the room, out of sight as you watch everyone else get along with ease. You start daydreaming and secretly wishing the cute guy with the warm smile standing just a few feet away would approach you. After all, that is why you went out that night anyway. You got tired of always feeling alone. Always feeling unwanted, unimportant, and invisible. You wanted someone to care for you. If you couldn't get love, you'd happily settle for care. You wanted someone to wrap you up in his strong arms and promise to keep you safe. Someone that would be there to hold your hand and ease your fears that have been growing since the day that first man you loved had made the choice to leave without warning, forever destroying the idea you were safe with and loved by the people you once called family. You'd never admit this to anyone. In fact, you never knew he was the one who opened your eyes to the this cruel reality until years later when you unexpectedly let another person into your confined heart and found a new family. Unfortunately, you let your guard down too easily and were hurt once more. They saw it as what was best for you, but the only thing you saw was a knife to the heart. 

Fast forward a few years, and you've finally managed to put some insecurities and failed relationships behind you, but you're still cautious. You don't want to get hurt again. You've found a new family; an unexpected group of people you never thought would exist. It wasn't large, but what it lacked in numbers it made up for in heart. It wasn't exactly the love you were looking for, but it was exactly the love you needed. They were far enough from the family biology had given you, and the distance allowed the broken pieces to be mended. It was never going to be completely repaired; something that broken just couldn't be made brand new again, but it was enough to keep it from falling apart again. Or so you thought.

Once again life went to hell. You were ripped from those that mean the most to you, forced to return to the life that hurt you from the minute you were born into it. Forced to spend every day and night with those who've treated you like nothing more than the dirt and ground they feel they're entitled to walk on. You're frustrated, angry, hurt, sad, and want nothing more than to just return home. Return to those you've come to love more than anything in this world. To those that have never made you feel like you weren't good enough or weren't important. To those who made you feel comfortable and safe in a place 97 miles from where you currently are. You know you'll never lose them, no matter how much distance is between you, but you can't help but feel like you will. Not knowing they're an arm's length away if you need them, makes you anxious and scared. Dying might have been your biggest fear for as long as you can remember, but there's one thing that terrifies you just as much if not more, and that's losing those you love. You fear being truly alone, always being unwanted, unneeded, unimportant, and invisible.

Most people think that saying "I love you" is the hardest thing to say. Sometimes you agree. "I love you" can be difficult, especially when you aren't sure if the person you're saying it to feels the same and will say it back. And it's that reason why "I miss you" can be even harder to admit to yourself, and to someone else. No one wants to feel like their heart is being ripped from their chest. No one wants to feel like they're going to puke. And a genuine "I miss you", not the casual one we all say every once in a while for one reason or another, can do that. It can make you feel like your heart is being torn to shreds, it can turn your stomach to knots instantly, and it can force you to bury it in a big hole that you never dig up to save yourself from pain. Saying "I miss you" is like admitting you feel like you're losing something, and for some it's not something to take lightly.

Suddenly that voice in your head is screaming louder and louder that something is missing. That you want more. That you need to have the family you had been looking for originally. A couple deep breaths and you realize the two car garage and the white picket fence aren't the only things you want. You have your untraditional family and wouldn't trade them for anything; not even the traditional one you've been dreaming of since the age of six. Each member of your family has taught you something about yourself and even if you didn't agree with them, you're still grateful for everything they've said or done. You don't always tell them how much they mean to you and how much you love them, and when you do it's usually through some cheesy buzzfeed or thought catalogue list you find when scrolling through facebook.

But today is different. Today you decided to put just how you feel into your own words because well, not even a buzzfeed or thought catalogue list could do it justice this time. You sit down with a pen and paper after a crappy day and are inspired to write. You tell them everything you've left out of conversations because you've been too afraid to do so. You tell them you love them and that they mean the world to you. You tell them losing them is the worst possible thing you can imagine. But most importantly, you finally tell them you miss them. You've been trying for weeks, but just couldn't. Every text message, every conversation, you've wanted to say "I miss you" but you just didn't have the courage to do so. Today you do. "I miss you."

This blog post goes out to everyone I am grateful to have come to call family. You know who you are, so I won't advertise it for the whole world to see (or rather the small number of people who happen to stumble across this site of extremely un-related articles). We might be in two completly different states, 97 miles apart, separated by an ocean and a river living lives with two completely different schedules, but you will never leave my heart, and I know I will never leave yours. And it's because of that love, I couldn't ask for a better group of people to call family.

Always and forever,