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My Family

My family is... amazing. We haven't always gotten along, and we're all very different people, but there's something special about my family. I think a lot of other families would have fallen apart after all that we've been through, and trust me, we have had some short-term falling-outs, but over time my family has just gotten stronger. We have had to depend on each other and ask for each other's help so often, that somehow we've become this odd intertwined web.

The last few weeks, we have been dealing with some major struggles, bigger than our usual money and stress struggles. One would think that after how much emotional energy has been expended lately, none of us would have much left to give. For some reason, though, my mom and my brother are here today essentially taking care of me. They've gone grocery shopping with me, cooked dinner for me, and are helping me give my apartment a good cleaning. They didn't have to do it, they didn't have to leave their new house where they still have a lot of unpacking to do, come up this weekend, and give me a chance to rest and focus on getting caught up on school, but they did. How many other families would make a trip to do that outside of extreme circumstances? If anything, I should have gone back home to them this weekend to take care of them.

I distinctly remember writing a blog post two or three years ago about how my family was essentially a group of strangers living in the same house together, and I don't think that was just teenage angst. After years and years of people constantly coming and going from my family, we finally hit this rock bottom place where we realized that we were the only constant thing any of us had had in our lives for a very long time and yet none of us really knew each other. We never said it aloud, and I don't think any of us necessarily realized the change within our family or that moment we understood that we needed each other, but it's different now. My family has this strength, this bond. It might have taken us 22 years to get there, but what do you expect when we have been perpetually healing over the last 16 years?

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