The Family We Choose

During my last quarter hour at work, my cell phone buzzes incessantly.  I am positively bombarded by messages from my roommates.  They text to make sure I'll be home on time, to ask if I remembered to put oil in my car, or to make dinner plans. We're always checking in on each other this way.

My shifts usually run latest, so when I arrive home the whole gang is assembled in the living room.
 The duplex fills up with laughter as everyone clamors to simultaneously ask me about my day and tell me about their own.  A few nights each week we pool our efforts and whip up a home-cooked dinner.  Tom and I take control of the kitchen, manipulating low budget groceries into five star cuisine that invariably involves noodles.  We talk and laugh the entire time, hardly pausing to breathe, until the food hits table.  And then none of us make a sound, because we're too busy stuffing our faces.

Afterward, when we're all sprawled in our assigned seats in front of the television, either chatting away or sitting in comfortable silence, I am utterly at peace.  This is what life is meant to be like.  I am the luckiest girl on the planet.  I feel so full of joy.

I've been trying to explain this happiness to the ten thousand concerned acquaintances who seem to think I spend all my nights crying over my "loss."  I don't feel like I've lost anything.  I've gained the world. Having people like my house-mates in my life, people who genuinely care about one another and enjoy each other's company, is exactly what I have always wanted.  I constantly say that friends are the family we choose, and I've never meant it more than I do now.  The four of us make up a perfect little family.  And even though it took a major upheaval to bring me to this house with these friends, this is the life and family I choose.  I wouldn't change things even if I could.