What is Family?

This is a concept I have thought a lot about in the past couple of days.

In the beginning, your true family is who you are born with. Your parents and siblings you fight and bicker, but ultimately, they are the closest people to you.

Then you get to school and start to make friends, but they are as close to you as your family. But it is nice to have someone to talk to about Star Wars legos and why Anakin is the best Jedi. Then you get invited to a sleepover and watch a movie that maybe you weren't supposed to watch and talk about girls, but ultimately, you always go back to your family.

Then you get to high school, and your friends become everything. You are with them more than your family. It isn't necessarily cool to "like" your family anymore. The moment you leave school, you go to your friend's house and ignore the text from your mom that says, "When will you be home?"

But when your friendships fall apart, your family is always there to catch you. They are the only people who are consistently there for you.

I think a family can form in two ways. Blood relations and/or people forced into discomfort together whether they know each other or not.

This was all very long and didn't make a lot of sense. The point I am making is I would consider the people around me family, and we didn't know each other 14 days ago. Pressure produces diamonds, and I think that is very true here. We were all a bunch of toddlers thrown into the deep end, and we had to teach each other how to swim. We have truly lived life exclusively with each other in a very new situation for everyone. I believe situations like these produce bonds between people unlike any other. We skipped the cheap title of "friend" and went straight to family.

Also, here is me bald.

-Drew McKinney