Family Is all we got!

My family on my parent's side is really small. It's small not because there aren't enough people, but because of the kind of people there are in it. From a very young age, we are taught that "family is everything", but how often are we taught to treat family like "everything"? I wasn't taught that, I learnt that with age, and when I did, there was already an unspoken distance between us all that couldn't be bridged. The fault is yours as much as it is theirs, because you know deep down that you never really gave a damn. 

As you grow up, you don't really need a lot of family support if you have strong parental support and if you yourself are a self-content person. But as you grow up, and you meet more and more people and eventually get married, the presence of a family, or the lack of thereof, becomes a prickly reality. Then you welcome, your new in-laws, like your own, like the one you wish you had and never really did. Because you have witnessed strained complicated kinship growing up, you know you want none of that in your new life, because this is your one last chance to start over. 

When I got married, I had 3 real family members attend the wedding, 2 of them being my parents. I usually mention this is a joke to people, but that truthfully is a veil of humor, trying to cover-up the tragedy, the loneliness, the detachment i feel almost everyday. At the end, I have learnt that having a dysfunctional family actually helps, because it teaches you how to not end up being like the older generations who actually knew lesser about compassion, and support and attachments. You learn that you better not screw this up, because this is the only thing that will see you through your bests and your worsts. If I can pass this much on to my kids, I'd say i'm successful.