22. Family

I used to be a part of a close-knit family. Grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins all lived fairly nearby. We would get together for each person's birthday, every major holiday, and sometimes for no reason at all.

We were a constellation. No, we were a solar system, all of us revolving around my grandparents house, at the center of it all. Corny, maybe, but no less true.

Then my parents moved me and my brother with them to Arizona. And then I moved myself to California. My brother headed up to Oregon. One bloodline now thrown across four zipcodes.

Now... If we stick with the solar system analogy I feel like we've all spun wildly off our respective axes, and gone wandering through space, tethered to nothing. Free, but wholly alone. It's a strange feeling.

Stranger still is the feeling of normalcy of that. Of calm acceptance. I don't feel a sense of nostalgic mourning for what once was. Neither am I ecstatic about. I am indifferent. I remember a time when two of my best friends on earth were my cousins Lisa and Mike. Today, I feel no urge to call them up and see how they are. I know that they don't experience this urge either, or my phone would have been ringing. And that's okay. I am not complaining, just observing.

Hmmm. So, to sum up: I am disconnected geographically and physically, so I begin to feel disconnected emotionally, which leads me to care less and less about reconnecting physically, so I don't... and then I feel even more disconnected. Strange loop.