A Correction

Dear Parents:
I have to correct you on something you said to me repeatedly during my adolescence (notably in March of 1988- don't ask how/why I remember.)
I was hanging out with a rag-tag bunch of guys (and girls) who were overly creative and underly productive. A misfit bunch of dreamers and weirdos. Interesting characters to be sure.

The supposition was that I would only have my friends for a short time and then they would work themselves into their own lives, leaving me dangling and alone.... I thought at the time it was a scare tactic designed to pressure me into the arms of the family and the church.

Well, here we are in 2010. 21 years since the big earthquake in San Francisco. I have traveled a fairly funky road. Things in my world aren't quite 'normal' according to the norms of society. But the one thing I notice is this:
I still have my friends. The same friends. Some of them for well over 25 years.
We spend time together, we talk on the phone.
We travel together.
Our spouses are friends.
Our children are friends.
I have no hesitation entrusting my children to my friends. They feel the same about me.
My friends are authorized to check my kids out of school.
My children are encouraged to talk to my adult friends as if they are peers or siblings.
My friends know how to get into my house if they need something.
I know the same about them. I've never raided their cookie stash, but it is comforting that I could. Being cookieless is a dismal state. (stay out of my cookies, Lester)
My friends and I have good relationships with each others extended families. We socialize and fraternize with them.
I have handed my newborn children to my friends, and they have reciprocated.
In recent developments, I am carrying my friends to their graves, and in due time, it will be my turn. My friends will bury me if I don't bury them first. I have no doubt of this.

The friendships I have with these people have been going on for nearly 30 years, yet I don't feel like we are even halfway there.

You see, we aren't all that strange after all. We are not quite the same as most people, but the thing that makes us different is that we found a tribe of like-minded individuals and we stuck with it.

I can't say I trust any family members the same way.

Perhaps this is because my family never trusted me to make these kind of decisions for myself.
I've realized recently that your actions were in fact scare tactics designed to drive me terrified and submissively into the arms of your reality. I apologize if you feel like I've rejected you, but I'd like to let you know that I'm continuing on down this road, me and my tribe.