The popular saying goes ‘Blood is thicker than
water’ and throughout the years people have always taken this as the gospel
truth.
One sunny afternoon, we were having a bit of chat
about a father in that day’s paper who had raped his daughter; carrying over
from previous conversations about family and that sort of thing I asked my
colleague whether it was justified that the daughter in the story would never
want anything to do with said father. Without any hesitation, he said that
family was family and she was not justified in doing any such thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for forgiveness and
everything that comes with it however forgiveness does not come with
forgetfulness and closure. It frees you from the chains that are hatred but it
does not heal you or cause amnesia.
Having been in boarding schools all my life, I
have had many friends building a pretty intriguing memory bank along the way.
This does not fully count during primary school though because I had about 4
relatives per class (Believe it or not, my parents and their siblings used to
decide on a number of schools where it would be ‘safe’ to take their children)
so I never really got around to making many friends.
I am not really a family person so I always spent
a lot of time with my friends. Of course I love my family but most times I
simply feel that they don’t get me, cliché I know. My parents were both last
born children and started a family a bit later than their siblings, which means
I am an aunt to people who have children that are my age. Most of my cousins
are significantly older than I am and I have an old people problem (very long
story for another day) so I kind of always had many friends.
Being the outgoing and slightly higher than
relatively loud person that I am, I hardly have a difficult time making friends
and over the years I was lucky enough to meet people who were like family to
me. As human beings, the one thing we can do without fail is mess up (I just
thought I just let that chill somewhere here)
The smartest guy I ever met in my existence and at
a time where there was so much change in my life that I probably wouldn’t have
survived on my own. Life happened but I would drop everything to help him. There
was that amazing girl from about 3 years ago, we were not compatible but she
definitely became family. Within the same space, I met a different girl. I think
that was the closest I ever came to knowing someone who was so much like me.
She was amazing, thoughtful, a delight and blood has never been thicker but
like all good things. There was that guy who lit up my world literally I doubt
there will ever be a deeper and stronger love. A dysfunctional one, a girl but
blood none the less.
There
were moments when I had matter of life or death situations and my friends did
not hesitate to come through. There’s family that one is born to and there’s
people that join the family because of who they are, and they are not any less
family because there are no blood ties. Blood will always be blood, but water
slowly but surely does become blood.