La Familia

In an unfotunate set of circumstances, I was heart broken and betrayed by the woman who raised me.
She is the person whom I consider to be the most influential in my life, and she is part of the reason why I'm writing this post today.
She is the reason I know that evil exists.
Although I never let her sway my thoughts and the trust and love I feel for perfect strangers, she has taught me that without dark, there is no light. She taught me how to love. She taught me how to grieve.....how to grieve for my very own life. She taught me how to lie, how to braid my hair, brush my teeth, how to curtsy for the Queen.
...most importantly, she has taught me that blood is not always necessarily thicker than water. Matter of fact, in my journey, it almost never is.
Every single person in my life has an impact. Every single one. The strangers accross the street, the person I glanced at in the courtroom, my step mother, my aunts, cousins, the epileptic woman on trial for murder, the homeless guy who denied me when I offered money, my exes, my old friends.....
In my experience, the people who have had the biggest influence in my life, both positive and negative, have been those who are not blood related.
I chose it this way, back when I was creating the amazing, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, painful, beautiful blue print of my life. I chose my ridiculously perfect parents, imperfections included. My sweet mother. My charming and tempermental gypsy father, who taught me it was okay to let the wind fill my sails and take me wherever and whenever it may. I chose my attractive, feminine, alluring, deceitful, betraying step mother. I chose every single one of the friends who have molded me, the three men I've fallen in love with, my drug-addict ex boyfriend, my crazy cool bosses, my room mate who held my hand through the most tragic and painful times in my life.....
All of these people, I chose...way before I came to this life. I chose them as my Karma, as my joy, as my pain, I chose them to help me grow....transcend....receive.
My mom has a hard time letting go of people who cause her harm...she uses the "this is my family" excuse.
What I wish I could relay to her, is that here, in this life, we have the luxury of creating our own family. Blood has no place unless you want it to. Here, you create your own blood. Here, you create your own reality, you have so much control and power over your own life.......it amazes me when people don't realize this. It's sad when we don't realize that every single choice we make affects the weave of our universe, starting with us and traveling through every soul, every atom, every speck of dust in this entire ball of energy we call life.
This is why, I know that even though someone raises you and pretends to love you as if you were their own, you are allowed to remove them from your life. There are no rules here, this is your life. This is your family. Your circle. These are the souls you are choosing to travel with in your next lifetime(s). CHOOSE WISELY.
Give perfect strangers a chance....you never know who will forever change you.
The crazy thing is that my mom doesn't even realize that she's the one who taught me this incredibly valuble lesson when she looked around at my birthday dinner at all of my loyal friends, who have my best interest at heart, who LOVE me unconditionally, who are ALWAYS present...always there through thick, through thin and everything in between, who are perfect in every way even with all their imperfections, who think I am perfect even with mine, and she said to me: "Lali, I always say we have such a small family....I was wrong, we have a HUGE family. This is our family."
And she was so right....so perfectly right.
I've learned that we choose our poison. And if we don't remove it, <quick>, we lose sight, we stop growing...we lose.....we die.
This is the reason why, in this life, in this crazy crazy world, where we dedicate an entire day to donuts, where people snort bath salts to get high and literally eat other people's faces off, I embrace every single new relationship both positive and negative, why I follow up, check in, why I genuinely care, because I believe that through the insanity, we continue to build our family, our circle, and in turn, we build and discover ourselves.
And isn't that our ultimate goal?