Pick and Choose

This was meant to be Sunday’s post. It’s on last week’s theme, “Affinity.”
Family is an interesting concept. We have a natural affinity for those who share our blood, our genetics, our biology. We cannot choose them—more specifically, we don’t choose the multitudes of relationships we become involved in when born into certain families, and not others.
I have several friends who have large, complex families. Let’s call these friends D, J, O and A. D can’t tell his mother or father about romantic relationships. D has an alcoholic aunt who no one talks to. I met her, once, the aunt. She got in D’s car and we took her to a liquor store. A’s family can’t accept that he’s gay, or at the very least not heterosexual. I, who’ve hung around A for years, am decidedly the token signifcant other, though there must be tinges of knowledge otherwise. I’m the only girl he’s ever brought around. It must be obvious. O’s parents, divorced, force him to pick sides and fight over him. O’s parents both want to go to the same event, but can’t stand to be around each other. He has to pick a side; he’ll lose the one he doesn’t choose. J’s parents are unreal. She and her mother call each other things, jokingly, like “bitch.” Her mother once told me, “I’m not ready to let her go.” Their relationship is horrible, and so this attachment amazes me. J hides romance from her, they don’t talk. This fighting, wolvish, clannish attitudes between families amazes me. It’s hard for me to grasp, perhaps because I’ve never had a family like that.
The relationship between my family is different than most. My parents and I are extremely close, and perhaps that’s why they understand my wanting to get away. We talk about everything. We’ve talked about things that most families would never dare speak of. I once had a therapist tell me, “You’re lucky to have parents like that.” and when a therapist tells you that, you know it’s true.
But asides from my immediate family, the distance between my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents keeps me close to friends. And, based off my last post of affinity, you’d think that most of my friends are very much like me. But with most of my friends, we perform the “opposites attract, differences are minimized” game. And while I love my friends, for their differences and their similarities, I am excited to find people who are completely like and unlike me in the coming weeks. While I find that my approach to affinity last week was rather harsh and rather true, I think that the idea of discussing differences and coming to accept them, or at least honestly discuss them, is the only way to really evolve as a person and to try and widen my viewpoint. I don’t think that, then, the world is as like a mirror as many construct it to be. Differences give me hope for that sort of thing, and are easier to mold and learn from through honest friendship. With family, the bonds are more precious, both sturdier and more fragile. Some people think that because of this, family is the most important thing in the world. I think relationships are, but the kinds are variable.

“When I was little, my dad used to tell me, ‘Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.’…” - John Green and David Levithan, Chapter One of Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Do you think that learning from differences in friendships and beliefs can happen effectively, or that it all ends up minimizing contrasts?