How can it be real if it ends?
Family is meant to stay together
Especially a family of friends
When there is no biological family
Friends are all there is to be family
I was hoping you would be my family
If it ends how can it be family?
Ah, the question I've asked since before I knew I was asking. When I discovered I had no biological family, I realized that to have family, I had to choose to bond with those around me and choose family. I realized I had no definition, no reference other than the biological families I observed and stories about families and they were all so different in so many ways. I needed to define family for myself. I looked for the commonalities and similarities in how families behaved and decided that the ideal family lives and would die for each other. The ultimate sacrifice for another living being is being willing to give your life so that other being may live.
It's in all the books. lol.
I laugh to keep from crying.
Unfortunately, I have yet to find anyone who might die for me and so I accept a compromise of the ideal and base my choices on core values, on purest intentions, on what the person wants most in this life. My family is a person who wants peace and happiness in this life and above all else, to do no harm. My family wants no pain or suffering by my (or our) hands. I've come to compromise that as well, since we eat living things in order to survive so we have a hand in the death of living things. It may contradict my wanting to belief that all life is family, but there is an idealistic dreamer at my core who reaches beyond the understanding of life and death as we know it to find peace with some sort of unexplained balance. Intend no harm, do as little harm as possible. This is how I want to live. This is how I want my family to want to live. This is how I want us to help each other live.
Did I mention I have not found someone who wants to share this?
Still, there's always hope. Jackson is as close as I've come to a heart with purely harmless intentions. She does not always succeed, like me and perhaps everyone else, but she hurts more than anyone I know when others hurt. She does not handle it well and I sometimes fear for her emotional safety (even her physical safety at peak pain-feeling). I am not sure she knows she is an empath or maybe she does not understand how to process the feelings all the time. It is what makes her my choice for family at this time.
Being empathic comes with a fragility that requires great strength and many empaths do not develop such strength, leaving them confused and releasing the emotions in a variety of ways, some that appear incongruous with the caring that brings the ability to feel as an empath feels. The emotion coming in overwhelms the mind and it can lead to erratic, even violent behaviors that appear random (and may well be at times), sometimes aimed inward (ulcers are one result of repressed emotional energies, but the body reacts in a myriad of ways we barely know of).
In some ways, perhaps it is a desperate attempt to find some control of the flood of emotions overwhelming the mind and the people, experiences, and/or events stimulating the emotions. It is challenging for many people to accept some things are beyond our control, or unknown, for tat matter.
Anyway, this blog began maybe a year before I moved in with Jackson, which was part of a life change that inspired a shelving of the previous daily blog (that babbling madness called Behind The Candoor, for those of you who've been around that long. Have I said thank you lately? More than words will ever be able to express, I love you for continuing to check in on me. I am still hoping we will share more, if just a (or another) brief visit so we can look into each others eyes and smile, someday.
As I was saying, this blog has since been shelved, relatively, and a new daily has been flowing since the last major life change, which included Jackson and Curious (her/our cat) moving out, the loss of Happiness (her/or dog, who's ashes, or at least some of them, are carefully placed on a shelf wherever I may live... I still miss him dearly), and an adventure in living like a refugee in various places because, well, you can read about it in the current daily, ironically called in case it matters.
I stopped by here today for a specific purpose, however, and it appears that redefining what family means to me is part of that. The inspiration for this longer-than-usual brief daily retrospective entry is simply to say...
because your heart is pure
I see and feel you feeling me
for your heart has no door
love is forever when it's real
and that can be challenging
for people lie and cheat and steal
egos all want to be king
but for those of us who's hearts take lead
this world can be cruel to feel
when it overwhelms, please remember me
I am here to help you heal
It's my own way of being family
I don't know how else to do it
whatever you may be going through
I am here to help you through it
I want no one to ever feel pain
and I know you wish the same for me
so you know I will say it again
we are family
On the day you came into the world
This world became a better place
and every year I will remind you
with the smile upon my face
when I think of you and feel your heart
I feel hope for humanity
so as another year of your life starts
Happy Birthday, family
Happy Birthday, my family
Happy Birthday, Jackson
Happy Birthday, E
