I'm going to rant a little bit on a lot on what 'family' is supposed to be. Because this is written off the top of my head I may repeat myself, make errors in spelling and grammar, get off topic and act otherwise dumb. Just a heads up I suppose.
My family has always been consistently small. My mother, my father, my sister and I as well as my Poppop and Grandma. Outside of this small ring of immediate family stood the people genetically related to me on my fathers side. This included some aunts and uncles and maybe like a few half cousins, me only actually knowing one of them.
I've never known my mother's side of the family, nor do I really want to know them. I haven't been given a lot of information about them, granted, but if they had ever really wanted to know me, or wanted to even attempt to contact my mother, they should have done it years ago. For all I care they don't deserve to know how wonderful my mother is, or that she married a good man that is my father, or that they now have 2 kids, that although can be bratty, love them both very much.
To be honest, I didn't even know people were supposed to have two sets of grandparents until 5th grade when we started doing family trees in school. I always just thought you had one grandma, one grandpa and that was it. In retrospect, family trees were the worst, I didn't have a lot of history and while other kids had big diagrams to show off to the class mine was largely spaced out to fit a single piece of construction paper.
That didn't mean I didn't have any other family though. What my family consists of is people that are not actually related to me. These people are my parent's best friends, who have been dubbed uncles and aunts, and from that I received cousins as well. I grew up surrounded by these people and I didn't understand for a long time that they were not actually considered family by the vast majority of people.
But why not? These are the people who actually care about me and my family, and in turn we care about them. Family photos are cluttered with these people that I have known practically from birth, and we refer to each other as family in public just like everyone else. I feel like it becomes a social taboo to speak to people that are not genetically tied to you are if they were, and it infuriates me.
People that share similar ancestors don't necessarily CARE about you. They don't have to be there for you and often times they just couldn't give a damn.
But yet, no, the people who do want the best for you, love you AS IF YOUR FAMILY, don't count. They are just people you know and nothing else. No matter what memories of these people you have, no matter how you refer to each other, it doesn't matter, because the cells in your body don't have the correct genetic code.
I hate the condescending tone when people have said to others, not necessarily me, "But they aren't your REAL family," as if somehow they have the right to judge whether it is real enough for their standard.
I admit, I have a bad temper and a horrible attitude, but I really question why people are so shocked when I get angry at complete idiocy. Do you know how much nerve it takes to sit there quietly and take in such massive amounts of stupid? So many human beings have slipped into a state of narrow thinking about subjects even past this single point I am trying to make, and it infuriates me how people could advance so far and still manage to be the same dimwitted animals they were hundreds of years ago.
I know I can't change the world with this, maybe I can't even get my perspective to pass the fleeting gaze of someone clicking by, but it does not effect how potent I am trying to make this single message.
The people who share your blood may be relatives, but the people who care most about you are the real family.