As we
prance past our teen years and into the twenties, we encounter and mingle with
people. Some skin will never again clasp together in passing to give us the
ubiquitous, “High Five” as every person we interact with becomes a friend, or acquaintance,
or the all ever present stranger. Our
twenties are filled with people, and as we mark our friends, as so we mark our
family. The general idea of family is those related to you by blood or by
marriage. However, as is my case, we leave out the stuffing to the Thanksgiving
Feast of Family: The Friend Family.
No, I
am not talking about the group of people you hang out with and call “fam” who
come in and out like fireflies to a lamppost, just looks for the next big thing. I am speaking strictly of the friends who are
so intertwined in with you that sometimes people cannot tell the two of you
apart.
In your
twenties, you either marry or you friend. Most of those friends will be the ones
aforementioned, but if you were as lucky as I was, you will get to pull the
unicorn out of the hat and get a true and true Best Friend for Life, the real
BFF. When you have an absolute best friend, the one who is actually there for
every up and down; you live together, you eat together, you get terrible
haircuts together, there is this inclusion and molding of two families
exclusively thought to just derive through marriage. You exchange presents with
each family on special occasions, you know their cousin’s birthdates, you’ve
been to weddings and vacations so many times that you know what size clothes
everyone wears.
This,
this type of friendship surpasses all inflections of just “friend” and moves
into the category of family. It’s the J.D. and Turk effect when you found a
lifetime friend. And, when you’ve found that friend, you’ve also found their
family.
My best friend and I cemented our friendship on the mossy green lawn of a Fall Out Boy concert. We went through religious upheaval, spiritual awakenings, scientific findings, and became to one another the adventure seekers and dreamers needed to grow into somewhat adults through our twenties. During this time, we also both became acquainted and then known to one another’s family. I learned their hardships and they learned mine. We adopted each other as our own. We became more than friend, we became kin.
To me,
they are my Best Friend In-Laws. Maybe not by virtue of actual “law” as with
marriage, but by societal construct of what that term means. The Holidays are a
big event of conjoined togetherness. And though it is hard to understand as a
bystander, it is not hard to see that family is in itself a blossoming
definition.
So, thank
you, Best Friend mother In- Law, for showing me to love another person and to
endure with kindness above everything. Thank you, as well, Best Friend Father in
law for loaning yourself to me as my father has now been placed back to the
earth, and someday soon walking me down the aisle as we join our next set of
family together as well.
Thank
you, Best Friend In-laws, for not only raising a daughter to whom I have shared
the hardships of the catapult of fried cheese and responsibilities that is
adulthood, but for also holding my hand through every fated event. I cannot
thank you enough for being the chatty, lively, bunch of people I have grown to
love.
And for
all Best Friend Families, carry on.
