I grew up having relatively no family. No cousins to joke around with, no prying aunts, no adoring grandparents and no warm and cozy family dinners. I didn’t get that opportunity that many are fortunate to have. I really only have my parents, with no siblings to share them with. I do have some family, of course, but being able to see them maybe once a year for a couple of days isn’t enough to create those tender feelings towards my family. Half of my family was roughly 2,000 miles away in a different country that required an airplane to visit them, but the other half? They just choose to alienate me from their lives. I’m not bitter, but I am angry and I feel cheated out of something that I felt should’ve been a given in my lifetime. I don’t understand the concept of familial love, just because I, myself, had never truly been shown what it means to be a part of one big family. So I’ve decided to write this piece to the family that I never had, despite the fact that they were all less than two hours away from me, yet never want to be in my life.

The first time I was really seeing what a family dinner full of happiness and good feelings looked like was going to my then boyfriend's house for dinner with them. I was so shocked that they were able to have a huge meal with card games, beer, and Saturday Night Live. I felt like an alien, studying human interactions because I had never known what it was like to really feel as a part of a family that loved and cared for one another. It was amazing to see that the stereotypical family dinners I pictured in my head were true. I’m happy with my small family, but upon seeing this, I really yearn for that extended-family love that it seems like everyone has.

When I was growing up, I never really saw that we didn’t have an extended family because of how much love my parents gave me. I saw my family in Mexico enough times that I started to see that they were my family. It became normal for me to only see my family maybe once a year with the occasional phone calls (this was way back when you had to pick up international phone calling cards to call to Mexico). Up until my eighth-grade year, almost freshman year of high school, my paternal family started to slowly reach out. I didn’t understand what was the reason that they were never there until my mother told me a year later. It hurts when somebody who is considered your blood and kin doesn’t want anything to do with you, and it isn’t until you’re past that growing up stage and onto the adult development stage that they decide that you’re finally good enough for them. It hurts knowing that the reason they didn’t love you was due to your racial background and your father’s choice of who to marry.

So I just have a few things to say to that group of people that decided themselves that they don’t want me in their lives nor for me to be in theirs--I forgive you, despite the fact that you were the ones who decided that me and my mother’s background was too much for you to bear, and I also don’t need you in my life anymore, I have found better people who appreciate all that I can do for them. The saying that you can’t pick your family, but you can pick your friends? I found out a way to make my friends my family and I’ve never felt more at home, so thank you for that, because without your intolerance, I never would’ve found such wonderful people.