What is family? Sometime back I was really thinking about what family meant, and I realized that it has various meanings for different people. Family to me is anyone who loves me almost unconditionally and wants the best for me. I grew up thinking that family is blood and I’m sure a lot of us have as well. In many ways, it’s still a valid definition of family. However, I leave room for skepticism because of unique individual realities. I want to tell you how I adopted my family.
So as discussed above, family loves and encourages you to be the best you can be. I broadened my definition of family when life snatched my wig and came for my edges. I was a hot mess. Life said “you’re too cute or whatever, lemme throw in some trauma and spices”. Spices are as essential to black people drama, but let me not deviate. I was at my worst and desperately looking for human connection and support, but unsurprisingly I couldn’t find it in the places I thought I could. My blood family was too far so I couldn’t lean on them. There was a friend in school who I started to talk to about my problems and crying about my freshly snatched wig. He was genuinely concerned about me and my well-being.
Of course, I had to self-sabotage so I started to distance myself from him because it didn’t make sense to me why he was being so nice. He obviously saw me distancing myself and wouldn’t let me. He was constantly on my neck and overtime he became family. He didn’t become family because of the fact that he was always checking up on me, he became family because he had my best interest at heart. One day, we were sitting and chatting in a library and I jokingly told him that he’s been adopted as my brother and he smiled and said “you’ve been my brother from the time you opened your heart to me”.
Since then my adopted family has increased. The most recent adopted members were the humanist family and I’m glad I have. Sometimes I wish we’d stop fighting on how bad religion is and just love humanity as is. It’s okay though because we’re a family and families don’t always agree, what we do all agree on however is our love for each other.
Regards,
The Boy Behind the Flowers
