Family

I used to believe that I belonged to myself.

Life is stupid. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking that no one loves you – no one will ever love you. What you do in this situation, is make sure you have someone that will tell you that they love you. Because you always, always have those people. You just have to find them.

Three years after I came into the big bad world, my sister was born, and we did well, my parents and my sister and I. We built our own little bubble, and lived happily inside.

I stepped out a lot. I broke free of the bubble countless times, when I was angry, or frustrated… but I always came back. I didn’t really know why I came back. I didn’t really know why I’d be promising myself never to talk to my parents or sister again, and then two hours later we’d be sitting together laughing.

The world isn’t an illusion, it’s a reality, and you will be waking up to it every day. Stuff happens, things break, and you fight with the ones you love more times than you can count. The very definition of family is overcoming that.

And I guess we all came back to bubble. Because failure in life is inevitable – honestly, you can’t possibly have lived unless you have tasted failure. And when that happens, that bubble is what we call home.

And we all get lost. Life is a force beyond your control – until you learn how to control it. So do that. Learn how to take control. Don’t step out of your bubble, ever, because that is when you start to lose people. Smile, even when you don’t feel like it. Accept your world the way it is, and if not, work to make it better. Most importantly, have the strength to believe in your family.

Because being part of a family means that you are part of something wonderful. It means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life, no matter what.

Life is, in fact, a battle, and you need warriors for a war. And those people, the people that fight your battles with you, are the people that become your family, whether by blood or not. Because family isn’t always bound by appearances, or pieces of paper, or even genes. Family is loving those who love you. Family is what makes up the fragments of your heart. It’s not something that belongs to the past, but is very much part of your future.

As for belonging to myself, as time wore on, I realized, that no, I belong to the people that I love. For family is not who our DNA tells us we belong to. Family is whom we chose to belong to.

The essence of family is that we don’t seek perfection in those that are our family. We seek love – and even through the worst times, that is something that is always there.

-A Girl In This World