First things first, apologies for the radio silence. I won’t sugarcoat the reality — life has been incredibly, extremely, almost cartoonishly difficult as of late. No one tells you how to navigate the world after the single most important person to you for your entire adult life simply exits the picture. I won’t lie, I’ve been banging my head against the wall asking myself how I could have salvaged my marriage. I know I wasn’t the perfect wife. I’m starting to think I wasn’t meant to be anyone’s wife, if I’m completely honest. My own mother questioned why I chose that route, twice. Clearly, I’m not the marrying type.
But marriage is supposed to be the be-all, end-all of happy endings, right? If you’re an adult and you’re not trying to get hitched, what’s even the point? The climax of your entire life is that one day you get to dress to the nines and celebrate finding that one person who will be by your side for the rest of your days. Well, assuming you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t get divorced, like me. Nowadays, rather than ending with both spouses dying in each other’s arms after a long beautiful life together, around 40 percent of marriages end with a very unromantic trip to the courtroom. But if you never get married, you’ll never have a shot at starting a family of your own, and isn’t family what makes the world go ‘round? Doesn’t everyone want to be surrounded by familiar faces who support and cherish them?
I used to think every family started with a marriage. Two people who love each other decide to move forward and tie the knot. And as everyone knows, first comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes Mom and Dad with a baby carriage. Then those kids grow up, find their own “person,” and the cycle repeats. All the while, this thing called “family” is built, piece by piece. You get your nuclear families of parents and their kids as well as an extensive network of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
But we all know that family tends to be more…complicated than that. Who doesn’t have a weird, cool “aunt” who isn’t blood-related to anyone, but was just a fun lady your mom was besties with and always came around anyways? Not to mention all the blended families, stepdads and stepmoms stepping up for their new spouse’s extant kids and popping out some more half-siblings for them to grow up with. As I’ve gotten used to saying, no two families look exactly the same, and there’s no wrong way to be a family.
So what if your family isn’t glued together by matrimony or blood?
Enter a new model of family dynamics. The “chosen family.“
There’s a sadly false origin story of the phrase “blood is thicker than water” that more or less explains that the true meaning of the phrase isn’t that blood relations equates to stronger ties. Instead, it states that the blood of the enemies you slay together is thicker than the water of the womb. While this is unfortunately not the true origin of the oft-repeated proverb, I do believe it holds a profound truth nonetheless. I love my cousins back home dearly and consider them incredibly important to me, but they don’t know me like my closest friends in Kalamazoo do. They haven’t been on the front lines with me through my toughest battles the way my besties have. And like I said, that’s not to say those familial relationships are not valuable, but I feel like we often devalue the relationships we have outside our families. Found family is equally important.
I don’t have any blood relatives on this side of the state, but I have a family regardless. I have my inner little polycule, a ragtag bunch of bohemian weirdos who do life together, whether that’s dogsitting, doing laundry, or playing Cards Against Humanity ‘til the wee hours of the morn. We have an older couple at karaoke who we’ve deemed Karaoke Mom and Dad, who happily provide a safe space to anyone in the bar who needs it. There’s the sound guy, Steve, ultimate frisbee extraordinaire and one of the few men I’d trust with my life, and the late Brayden, who lives on in my memory as the little brother I never had. There’s Willy, my fledgling music career’s biggest cheerleader and the first to listen to any of my unreleased material, and Sara, who came over recently just to help me clean my apartment. They, and so many more, shape the world I live in, right here in this strange town I’ve come to love.
So if you’re reading this, I have a challenge for you. Go out into your community and find your people. Life is too difficult to go it alone. You need companionship. We all do. Find your chosen family, whatever that looks like. Always remember, so long as love comes first, there’s no wrong way to be a family.
