Family (n); People who found me: GARIMA G

 

Indeed, the multifarious version we are getting of family but i will make it sure after reading this you will be definitely diving deep into searching the better meanings for what exactly means. Let’s go and read. 

Family (n): People who found me.

If you ask what family means to me, I'll probably think for a moment too long; long enough to make you feel disgruntled with the pause, because surely, it's not that difficult to come up with what seems like the most seemingly logical answer? ; but I'll answer it, in due time. 

The truth is, family is everything that rests beneath my heart, tucked within my rib cage. family is my sister knowing what I feel, before I can undo the knot of emotions myself. family is my parents hugging me just a little bit longer, before I leave for the dorms. That is family, yes.

But family is a little more than blood. 

Family is also a choice, the homes we build in our heart for the people who take up a permanent residence there. Family is my friend reading between the lines, and asking me what's wrong despite my nonchalant, breezy messages. Family is my best friend, sending me a voice note tucked with my favourite songs, to comfort me when the world seems too big on my shoulders and we're too far away. Family is once strangers on the internet, with opposite time zones, who now know everything; from my favourite weather to that one time I cried at the dentist. People who send me the songs of rain because it reminds them of me, they say. Family is that friend I live too far away from, but the one who has been there through many lonely all-nighters. Family are the friends I joke with, about meeting one day and travelling with, as they are getting up for their day and I'm settling into the night. 

Light jokes laced with unsaid hopes.

So, you see, family is more than the blood in my veins. it's also the parts of my heart I willingly give away. The little pieces of their hearts that I am trusted with, that I fix carefully to mine. A kaleidoscope of all the love I receive, and what I gave away. Infinite and whole, reassuring and safe. Like it's never going to stop.

Sometimes, family is a home you're born into. and that's all there is to it, and that's okay too.

But sometimes, family is the homes you're welcomed into during the storms. It's the little pieces of them you tuck in your pockets, strangers making way in your heart until them, and their words, and their faith, and their dreams- all of their love filled existence gives you another home, and another. and another. Sometimes, family is the people who find you before you lose your way. and they choose to let you stay.

So, if you ask me what family is to me? I'll tell you about both of them, the one I was born into, and the one I chose and was chosen into.  And then I'll tell you that they're my resting place, the ground that tethers me when everything is too much and the world seems to fold in upon itself, and the places that keep me safe when the world is turning me away. 

Some hands hold us because they were meant to, and some hands hold us because we were travellers of the same path, and the only warmth during the storms that went on for too long.

That's family to me.

Garima Gupta