This is a post without a beginning or an end. It’s just something that needed to get out of the inside of my head.
I just got a very cute save-the-date card in the mail from one of my cousins, for her wedding.
In a different life, I’d have known this girl her entire life. In a different life, we’d have grown up in the same family, rather than me being a hole in her family and she being a complete unknown in mine.
I’m glad to be included, sad to still feel not at all part of that family, and confused at the whirl of emotion.
Family ceremonies are the times when we all get together — that’s true of both of my families. As an adult living far away from my families, both of them, I only see them with a good deal of planning and often with a reason. Weddings, funerals, occasionally a holiday — occasions.
At those occasions, I always feel out of place. Have always felt out of place. Maybe always will. And I’ll probably keep going anyway, because I don’t know how it would feel to feel “in” place.
Legally Fictional Reality 