Crystal Cheatham — Indie from the start

I am basking in the blessing of family. Family here, family there, family everywhere. I spent a huge amount of my teens and early twenties surrounded by friends. After my dad died I was shipped off to boarding school and that’s where I made my own family. I mean… I saw my real family on vacations. My mom would gather me and my brothers up and we would head to an Aunt’s house, or a huge family dinner. But those times became less and less as the years wore on.
Another strange thing is that when you’re young you can look at your friends and know them better than you know yourself. You can live with a group of people in College and believe that the lunch table is in a personal dining room, that pizza nights out will last forever, and that when your friends cry on your shoulders they intend to keep you #1 in their hearts forever. I’ve made some substantial friends in school, but things change when your best friend gets a boyfriend. Or your roommate gets a killer job. Or even when someone in your click moves and the dynamics change… people change. People grow up.
There was a time in my College years when I, the social butterfly, looked around and discovered I was alone. And I guess in times like those you just let things be, but over the past couple weeks a new love has been growing madly in my heart. It’s like forgetting and then coming back to a part of yourself that you couldn’t remember why you ever walked away from.
You see, I had begun to believe horrible things about the world, about friendship, and the human capacity to love, when my family showed up.
Not all at once, but little by little I have been reintroduced into the lives of my cousins, my uncles, my aunts. Here I see a tree of support so sturdy, no boyfriend or change in weather could break the bond. Because a family tree is a single unit of life, flowing and sharing all nourishments there in. Cheers to that. Family.