Family Is Friends Who Stay

In your twenties, friends come in and out of your life fast.

You join a kickball team, or run into someone at a bar, and in a couple weeks you're doing everything together. Pub trivia, poker nights, beach trips, ski weekends, flights to Vegas.

But then, somebody gets a new job or a new girlfriend – or two people that were at the center of the group break up – and everybody drifts their separate ways.

For me, dating has worked that way too: girls come and go.

And my family, while I love them and they've supported me through a lot, seems to exist at the periphery of my daily twentysomething life.

Which is why I wanted to say that I'm really, really lucky to have friends in my twenties who have become more than friends-in-my-twenties; they've become my new family.

Sunday night, Ash, St. Frances, Diego and I went to get some ramen. We were gone less than two hours, but in that moment I felt safer, more myself, like I was right where I was supposed to be, than I had all week.

Later that night, Corin called me, and as I paced up and down my quarter-mile hallway, talking to him, I had that same feeling: this feels like home.

And before that, briefly with the guys while passed out in the sun, underneath the Golden Gate bridge, after a short bike ride and a couple bloody marys.

With so many new people coming and going, it's easy to lose sense of who we are, what we're doing here. Being with these friends, this family we've built, erases those doubts. Like a warm mountain breeze.