People who say you can't choose your family are delusional.

There may be nothing more destructive to us as a species than

remaining in family circles where people often become too comfortable

damaging one another with impunity.

Not every family is toxic and not every relationship in a family

is toxic but chances are, when you've been living with one another since birth,

everyone's likely taking one another

for granted and a sort of sickness can develop.

You can absolutely choose your family even if you can't choose your blood.

The healthiest thing I ever did was leave behind everyone

I knew before the age of 19 when I flew off to China.

Of course, I do miss my family sometimes, but it's a 'missing' people

I wanted and needed them to be, not the people they actually were.

The people they actually were did me little or no good.

In an ideal (or at least reasonable) world, mothers, fathers

and siblings ought to be a positive influence,

encouraging and reinforcing the best of us.

The family I CHOSE may not be blood but, for the most part, it has taught

and strengthened me.

Friendship is so much more complicated.

I have never gotten along with girls for the most part.

Recently I scrubbed every female from my Twitter that

I wasn't friends with offline, or wasn't a playmate (approx 200) because, 

as is the custom with other girls,

what ugliness goes on behind the scenes

is simply just too depressing and it darkens me.

Everyone knows what I'm talking about --

all the negative crap just gets too much for me.

Sometimes the only way to steer out of the storm is to steer away

from what's making it rain.

If I were meaner and less "fluffy", I might fair better but...

I like being "fluffy".

The handful of friends I have, tend to be more positive, like myself,

and they subscribe to the same

ideas I have about monogamy, so we're playmates as well as friends

and we enjoy each other's men and

enjoy watching one another with each other's men.

Hanging out is sexy as well as encouraging.

I rate loyalty high on my moral scale. I commit to my friends like

I commit to all things.

I've driven 4 hours at 3am because a friend was sad and needed someone.

I don't lend money I only give it away.

I'll defend a friend to the destruction of another relationship

if they're in the right.

There's not much a friend could ask me to do I wouldn't do.

I'd help bury a body if asked.

Over the years I've had friendships that seemed fine until I

stepped back and realized they

weren't so I police the nature of my friendships pretty closely now.

Like family, friendships can become unhealthy and, like a rabid dog,

you gotta put it down,

even if it is a tear-jerker like Old Yeller.

It's important for us all to have a strong maternal and paternal

figure in our lives but it needn't beour actual blood mother/fathers,

just as it's great to have siblings that needn't share our DNA.

Men and women obviously have different ideas about what constitutes

a friend but it certainly makes iteasier to shore-up a friendship when

there's less jealousy and envy around.

I like to think of my playmates as friends; and surely I built

THE ROSE as a way of you

getting to know me a bit better without spending the time we have

together necessarily doing that.

I couldn't imagine having a friend I couldn't make out with.

Seems like a weird notion.

Some people need to make sex mean something romantic.

That seems strange to me.

There's so much I could say about family I won't say because

it's moot to some degree

but I do think that it would be fabulous if we all felt a lot more like family.

Racism, politics and hundreds of others ideas get in the way of

us liking one anotherlet alone feeling like family.

Because I'm "fluffy" I gravitate to movies and books where

-- as a species -- we overcome

the trivialities that divide us and find a means

to uniting without distinctions.

But then some asshole waiter cops an attitude or some whackjob in the

street just up-n-accosts you

for no reason and the next thing you know all the "fluffy" gets sucked

out the hatch of the plummeting airplane we call civility.

Now you're desperately clutching at your chute readied to jump.

Sigh.

I don't know why people would rather cling to preferences than other people.

The friends and family I've chosen around me make me

stronger than I could ever be alone.

I am so grateful to have that.

​

For whatever time we share,

I like to think I try to extend some of that to you.

​