We R Family

This weekend I went to my cousin Amy's wedding. She married her boyfriend of seven years, Kevin, in a church in LaGrange, Kentuckey. It was a gorgeous fall wedding, we giggled through the whole ceremoony and danced through the whole reception. My entire family on my Mom's side was there, for the first time in... well let's not get started on the "when was the last time" debate. Its been awhile. I came back home to LA today and I'm just as blue as can be. There's just nothing more important in this world than family, and its what I'm missing most of the time out here. After being here for over five years, I feel as alone as if I'd just moved out. I can't really help it, I guess. All my life I've moved every couple years, so that the only people I've known all my life have been my immediate family. I see how other folks out here have made their close friends into family, and I know I should do that, but I haven't. Not really. I have alot of good friends out here, but no one that I can say is like a brother or sister. I know that's part of the reason I fell so hard for Nick - his amazingly supportive and welcoming family, which included more people he wasn't related to than he was. I'm learning more about myself day after day, and I'm realizing that I need my family. I recognized that sense of relief when I came back to the restaurant - my friends at Asia de Cuba had started to feel like family, and when I left them last year, I didn't realize how lonely I'd be. I'm not discounting the many wonderful friends I have out here, I'm simply recognizing a level to which I haven't let them into my life. The person I was this weekend around my cousins hasn't been around here in a long time. I realize that I have to build a family for myself, outside of the ones back home, or else I'll be heading home myself really soon. Maybe that is the best choice for me - Mom and Dad certainly think so. They're usually right. At the end of the day, I'd rather be at a hundred cousin's weddings than on a hundred TV shows. Its good to learn things about yourself.