What Family Means to Me

I wish I had known sooner that the phrase “Let’s hang out sometime!” meant you might not ever see that friend again. Because when I had said “Yes, for sure!” I really meant it.

The onslaught of silence was a lot to bear.

Especially, when the slack to bear came in the form of missed calls, unanswered texts and a lot of heartbreak. In the corner of my eye I could see the reflection of my bandaged back in the hospital mirror. This was another instance that reaffirmed my undesirability. It must have been this unexplainable medical situation that scared them off.

In moments like these, captured by the reality that none of the ‘families’ of friends I had created throughout highschool or university would come to bear witness of my suffering, I broke. I cried for a long time, not for my own pain or my family’s but from the selfishness of portraying an image that I’d learned from those Instagram friendships of #squadgoals.

Now, as my father gingerly brings the wet sponge to clean my back, my eyes are blurry from the weeks without my contact lenses. As he washes off the grime from my back that’s built up from lying down all this time, I feel as if I’ve been able to see more clearly than ever before. It was the unconditional love of my parents through this difficult time that brought me back to life. No matter how harsh their observations that I had placed my identity into these other “families” I had to realize this now, that ultimately, it was always my family who came through for me at the end of the day.

I was too hard on myself and broken to see it but I couldn’t ask for help. I didn’t want to ask my real family or my other families. It took me until I saw my father crying for the first time, that my neglect for my own self-care and over-prioritization of others that I decided if the day I stopped breathing wasn’t going to end in me dying, than I had to decide to be myself and love that self. I had to put down my pride and realize that my real self was always going to be a person that cared way too much. A person who would over-commit to relationships and try regardless to make it work.

For me, the meaning of life comes from the depth and quality of relationships. I knew that as much when I found myself on the brink of death on this hospital bed; the grades, the job, the reputation became pointless. Maybe, I was just too hurt to come to terms with the fact that I cared and valued others a lot more than they needed or valued me. Because not seeing the faces of my friends or hearing from them in the months and later, years to follow, would end up hurting me much more than my surgical wounds ever could.

Change happens and of course it’s inevitable. The hardest ebbs and flows of different relationships and the mess that comes from them are concentrated during the early adult years. Years where we start work or go to school while we navigate the responsibilities and freedoms of adulthood. It seems as if there’s no better encapsulation of this than the Friend’s theme song where the love life’s DOA and it seems as if we’re stuck in second gear. But it’s the point about having people who will be there for you no matter what.

I’ve learned that sometimes life happens. There’s no one particular explanation that can encapsulate why some friendships will trickle out. Because change is constant and we can’t count on circumstances to always be conducive to establish long term friendships. But even if this concept of friendships phasing out is nothing new and must be learned… it doesn’t hurt any less. We get older and our commitments squeeze out the capacity to nurture the friendships and families we’ve created through childhood and young adulthood. And it’s tough on our psychological well-being and people are well, messy. Why bother? Why bother if most of these friendships are to inevitably end?

And the thing is, I’ve realized it now but the friendships eventually coming to an end. The death of certain relationships fostered new growth within me. It was from spending time with myself when I had no one else post-op that I began to foster the love I so craved from others to root it and nurture it. Rather than searching and finding, it was creating. A form of renewed self-creation.

So yet, batches of friendships have faded and my “created” families disappeared but that process in itself was beautiful. It was the old friends that taught me it was time to decide for myself who I wanted to be. And that was a self that was going to accept and acknowledge all the good and the bad parts within me. Someone self-sufficient yet capable of depending on others when times get tough. Someone who recognizes their inherent value enough to truly allow genuine, and meaningful friendships to form; to take root in a solid foundations and sprout one day into a beautiful flower and later on die and give birth to new life once again.

I don’t know the answer to the “why” some friends have to leave but I do know this. It’s that regardless of the pain and the nostalgia that comes from these dissolutions of meaningful friendships we so dearly appreciate and rely on, it’s that life will have its ups and downs, and those friendships will also have their ebbs and flows. Sometimes, people may not be there when you really need them to be but I hope you take the chance nonetheless to appreciate them when they are still there. It’s not worth the risk to not tell someone they are loved or appreciated. Life is too short for that. Don’t forget the magical moments that come from our families. And though we may both get hurt, I’m going to choose to love anyway and I hope you do too.