The phrase “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” is commonly said, and also sounds really strange. What it means in modern words is that the family you make through friends is closer than the family you have at birth.
There is no such thing as a perfect family. Everyone lives a messy life and families are just apart of that mess. We can’t all obtain a perfect nuclear family, and we have no control of what family we are born into. What we can control is what friends we surround ourselves with. When you find your friend group, one that just makes you feel welcome, it is like that perfect spot on the couch. It’s comforting, inviting, and you can just let go, relax and be comfortable. You can do whatever and be as weird as you want to be around them and never feel misplaced.
With any relationship, you have to build on it. In a family you have to maintain it cause you have to, you maintain a friendship because you want to. You get to bond over your interests and detest the same things together. I start telling my family about the things and they want to play concealer and correct my flawed idea, like no! I can tell Becca all my crap and all she says is “same” and we move on.
Friends understand you better, they understand you change, family doesn’t always get that. We grow and change our mindsets and what we want to do with ourselves. When you hear “you weren’t like that before” it gets a little irritating. You can remain the same forever, you have to change in order to become better, the good thing though is that friends grow with you.
People still have close bonds with their parents and siblings, but for some reason, it feels like blood relatives have no filter when it comes to interactions. The boundaries you set with strangers, using kinder words or using your manners, don’t always exist in families. I’ve seen people push and yell profanity at their own family but tell others, “you can’t do that, I can cause we’re family”. Just because they are your family does not mean you get to treat them poorly. Family doesn’t understand this and it ends up hurting, but friends are different. They hold onto that and treat you remembering you are equal, not less or better.
The bond we make ourselves are worth so much more than the ones were forced to have. Your friends help mold you into the person you are and provide you freedoms that you can’t always find from your family. Some are still trying to find that one close friend or sweet spot on the couch. You will one day I promise, you just haven’t sat in enough places yet.