A Family of Friends

If I shared this article with you directly it’s because you are part of my family of friends. Please take a moment to read it and then share it directly with those who are in your family of friends.

This post is part of my 30 day creative writing challenge. Click here to learn more about the challenge or here to explore the other posts in this series.

I don’t come from a big family, so over the years my friends have become my family.

In some ways that family is more important to me than the one I was born into. I mean… I don’t want to diminish the strength of blood relationships but that is not what this post is about.

This story is about the few people we encounter through the course of our lives, that make us feel as if we were meant to meet. Those people from whom you are incapable of withdrawing your unconditional love once it has been given. The people we call our best friends.

The family we are born into “requires” our love but we get to decide which of our friends “deserve” our love.

There may be nothing more powerful than picking the people you want to love in life. Then letting a few of them in to see the real you. The broken you.

See, we all put on a show for the world. We all want the public to see us one way, while in reality we live anther. Because who would accept us if we were really ourselves all the time?

It wouldn’t take long before we started getting into fights, and running into problems at work. We would start pissing people off left and right and eventually we would find ourselves all alone. So instead, we pretend.

We attempt to restrict our true selves. We pretend to comport in order to fit into the different communities in which we live. But there is a small group of people from which you need not hide.

The people who you would take a bullet for, and just as fast, punch in the face. Maybe even while laying in the hospital bed after taking that bullet. And you would throw that punch with confidence, knowing that they will love you anyway.

Because physical pain stands no chance when you make that kind of connection.

When you find someone who can make you smile from a million miles away. When you find someone who doesn’t even have to be in the same room to make you feel better about yourself. When you find someone who you can allow into the closest circles of these lies we love to live.

When you can find a person who decides to put you first, because they know that you have done the same for them.

When you can finally find, a family of friends.