If I have to hear “blood is thicker than water” one more time I am going to scream.

Google defines family as “a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household, a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage.” Blood seems to be the most important thing to create a family, but is there more? One of my personal favorite definitions is another one Google provides which is: “Family is a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy.” Not only is there an idea of relation to each other, but also loyalty, intimacy. Loyalty is defined as a support or allegiance to someone, so with this definition they include that a family must support their blood relative, not only be related by blood. But is this support just physical support? That you will support you family only at face value? Is it financial support? Or is it unconditional support from unconditional love? There are many questions to think about with these definitions, and it is with these definitions that I question what family really is, and what it means to me and my own family.

With these definitions, my parents and my siblings can be included as the dictionary term as family. The rest, well, there would have to be a definition to added and amended to the dictionary.

Family - "blood relatives who may or may not support you, that you have to deal with, and who will do and say things that upset you, but you cannot question it for if you do, then it isn't 'very family like.'"

This is where the lines between my family and the amended definition of "family" come in. To my parents, I pray this article doesn't come back to bite you in the butt by the others, but this is something that needs to be expressed. You always raised me to speak my mind, and it's taken my whole life, but I'm finally finding the words to speak my mind against those that are under the guise of "family" and "love."

To the rest of my family, or should I say 'family' in quotes, this is to you. I use you in quotes because of the aforementioned definition of loyalty and support. Is loyalty and support mocking my decisions of my future? My ideological and political beliefs? My gender and sexuality? The entirety of my self and personality? That when I visibly get upset and cry, it's because I'm sensitive. Not because maybe what you're saying about my core being is actually rude and upsetting? It took angry phone calls from my parents for you to apologize for your actions. Not my crying, but my parent's yells.

Family isn't supposed to be like this. Family isn't supposed to make you doubt yourself or your intentions. It's not supposed to make you feel like you're walking on eggshells to avoid triggering arguments where you're the prey. It's not about constantly dreading being around the other, due to you wondering "how much am I going to get hurt today?" That's not a foundation of love. It's a foundation of fear and obligation. The only reason I still want to clutch so hard to this idea of we're family is because it's been beaten into my head that this is all I have. That this is all I will ever have, and that's something that's taking me years to unlearn.

For a family that has enabled the physical abuse of my brother and I, that has allowed years of verbal assault, and when the victim finally speaks up and out, "it's their fault," is a family I don't want to call family. It is no family at all. It is a a group of strangers I share DNA with, and that's all I see it. It's agony to see family this way. You want to be able to have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. But when you have family members that get drunk and high, beat their children and people around them, threaten to kill everything around them, and then pass out, you can imagine it's not a family you'd want to be around. These are all of my earliest memories. The one family member destroying everything in his path. Constantly in and out of jail, the bar, slurring half-assed apologies, after he realized you're frightened. Only for sober him to not change a thing and be almost as insulting and mean as he was the night before. The rest of the family turning a blind-eye. It's just the way he is. If we admit a problem, it ruins this image of a perfect family because we want to feel better than we actually are. If we think we're some high uppity perfect family, maybe we finally will. Well I don't want to be part of this ride of not questioning, of allowing abusive behaviors exist, of having my pain and experiences erased. It's not that I don't love my family. It's just that I don't love the people they are. Give me a different external family, and maybe just maybe I'd finally be happy saying I have grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. It's not that I hate family. It's knowing if we weren't blood relatives I'd never associate with the likes of you, that's where I have to draw the line on family. It's knowing that even after I express these words, on one I want to will listen. If I could scream it out all the abuse and gas lighting I have endured, and it would cause you to change, then I would say that my life has finally reached it's ideal. But, life is realistic, not ideal. I know that idea is all for naught, and all this is is an attempt to make myself stronger. To let y words the void of the internet. To let others maybe just maybe see that they can find strength even in similar situations we face.

Family isn't supposed to hurt you. Those that say they're family and do, aren't any family at all.