My Family

Sometimes the world seems impassably treacherous.  Every new story you hear reminds you that there never is a final happily ever after.  Feeling even a little bit of pain can push you over the nihilistic edge, and you start to think that a whole lifetime is too much time to be alive when there is no real rest for the weary.  Why bother slogging through one more day of crap just to deal with a day after that, also full of crap, and so on and so forth?

This feeling overtakes me more than people who see me in daily life think and less than people who read my facebook wall think.  My antidote is generally movement (for example:  I was happy that my car broke down on the day of a traumatic breakup, and I had to walk 45 minutes to and from school for two weeks) and love.  Not the kind of love that only seems to end in tears, but the simpler and quieter kind that always stays.

I just skyped with my mom and my brother and felt a millstone lift off my chest.  I know that my family is special.  Sometimes we hurt each other or don't like each other, and sometimes we are far away.  Sometimes I feel like I didn't need my family, like I can do better all by myself in foreign places where no one knows my name.  Sometimes living home feels like a cage that I am trying to escape.
But in our family we stick together.  We move through the day, carrying or dragging each other as needed, and it's the little, normal things that fix the hurts.  We try to be honest.  We try to be kind.  We do a good job at accepting each other just as we are and supporting each other in our personal journeys.  We are getting better at it.

My family is my reason to believe in life.  I love you guys.

Sometimes it just hits you, you know?