The family you make

I've had Growing Up Falling Down (the Living End) stuck in my head for the past week or two. According to some my youth ended a couple months so I guess I should be all grown up already but I feel like right now is the moment that I am growing up.

I think that growing up is a lot about the family you make for yourself. As someone who is really close with the family I was born with I never thought about making a family for myself (because I already have one and I'm happy with it). I have been thinking about it a lot lately though.

There was a lot of talk about it in the news coverage of one of this summers big movies (Sex and the City). I didn't see the movie but it was something I questioned about the show so I understood the criticism, the girls families are hardly ever depicted in the movie (or the show), not even at their weddings. The explanation, of course, is that those girls may not be connected by blood, but they are each other's family.

The natural conclusion is that people make their friends into surrogate families because they don't like the families they were born with. Another possibility is people in extreme situations, working super long hours or the like, form those family like strong bonds with each other and it has nothing to do with dissatisfaction with their existing families (you see that in television too, Sorkin does it a lot).

Neither of those things apply to me, and yet, I find myself creating family for myself. Maybe, there was a void to fill...I never had a sister so I found myself one. Ever since then I've been building my family outside my family.

So now, it's not that the roots I have here in this place, my family, mean any less to me, but I have other things in my life now that mean just as much. The other things, other people, are pretty spread out. I know I'm going to be moving soon. The lease on my apartment is up in October and I don't think I'm staying the Seattle area. I'm just not sure where I'll end up. LA, Olympia, and New York are the options...Olympia is probably the most me, I like a laid back place, and one of my best friends is there now. Three years ago I was sure if I ever moved from Seattle it would be to LA, I have friends there, and an entire branch of my extended family in that area. New York is somewhere I swore I'd never live, but one of my best friends just moved there, my sister really (in this family I'm making for myself), and like family, I think we need each other. I'm not sure how it will work out, but no matter where I go I guess I will have family around me, whether it's the family I was born with or the one I make for myself.