fam-i-ly (noun)
People you love and who love you back, not necessarily related by blood or biologically, but you trust them and they trust you, and they take care of you and you take care of them.
That is the second definition of family in urban dictionary (the first was just plain rude).
I have never heard a more true statement. My family are the people I would do anything for. The ones I would drop whatever it is I was doing at the time, regardless of what it was or where I was, and come running regardless of the urgency of the call. They are the ones I would take a bullet for. They are the ones who would take a bullet for me. And they are the ones that I will forever hold near and dear to my heart no matter how mean they might get, how wrong they might be, or how much they might accidentally hurt my feelings.
My biological family is my backbone. Yes, they make me madder than a wet hen sometimes (see: urban dictionary definition), but I would be nobody without them. They make me proud to be who I am, regardless of what we might have been through in the past. They have made me who I am today by constantly encouraging me to follow my dreams and never, ever, ever worry about what others might think of me. Some of my (most of my) favorite memories are when I am surrounded by my family. It's just us and we can laugh until we cry or cry until we laugh and nobody outside of our little family clustered around the dinner table ever has to know that we just had the time of our lives.
But also, when I say family I don't just mean my own flesh and blood. I also mean those few and far between close friends of mine that have turned into much more than that over the years. They are also part of the reason I am who I am today. They encourage me just as well as my biological family does. They love me unconditionally and tell me the things that I don't want to hear but need to. We may go days or even weeks without speaking to one another (life is busy, man), but at the end of the day we all know who we can come back to when we need an encouraging word, someone to go eat with, a shoulder to cry on, or even just simply another person's presence.
Without all of those people I mentioned above, I wouldn't be who I am. I would lose myself and become lost in this world of chaos and violence. They make me who I am, they encourage me to be who I want to be, tell me things that I need to hear, and I know that they will never, ever leave me, especially in my time of need. And this all goes vice versa; I will always be there to help make them who they are, encourage them to be who they want to be, tell them things that they need to hear, and never, ever leave them when they need me most.
Shout out to the best fam in the world; you know who you are!
