Family and its concepts

Family denotes a group of people affiliated by a common ancestry, affinity or co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by "blood," anthropologists have argued that one must understand the idea of "blood" metaphorically, and that many societies understand 'family' through other concepts rather than through genetic distance. (source: Wikipedia)

There we are. That's it. Even though this was taken from Wikipedia I still think it is very true. Don't we all have certain groups of people surrounding us that we would consider our "family by choice"? Just recently my friend Claudi sent a request via facebook to add me as her relative. I sent her a message asking her whether she made a mistake since we are not related at all. Her response was : "We may not be related genetically but we are sisters by choice." Her message made me smile. I didn't know that she saw me that way. But I started thinking about it and yes, it is true. I do have friends (very few though) that I am profoundly connected with. There is this saying that "friends are the family you choose". I guess it's true.

Why am I talking about this? I don't know. Lol.

I woke up this morning and I kept thinking about how our lives are full of certain concepts. Concepts that were even more classified by giving them names. All this classification lead to taking them for granted without even realizing how important these concepts are for us. I don't live by concepts, I never have. That is actually the reason why I never got along with people. (Well, there have always been people that I got along with, of course!) But I don't fit in.

Take the concept of marriage for example: I got married when I was 21. This may be normal in the States but not at all in Germany. I got married to someone who is 20 yeas older than me: both countries don't necessarily "approve" of that. On top of that Matthias and I hardly ever see each other, and I am even planning on going away for 2 years "leaving him behind". It works for us, but it doesn't work for society. Thus I don't fit in. Yet again.

I am so sick of fighting for myself. Why do I always have to explain myself? Why is it always ME that is weird? Why don't people start rethinking about existant concepts?

I do have two families. I could never say I love one family more than the other. But I should be able to say that. Because that is what society wants me to do. Because it just is not "right". Is it really?

I am so fed up with all of this.

Sometimes I just wish I could leave everything behind and just leave this place and be nowhere to be found.