[SoloAJ]

This is a really timely topic for me. I'll try to articulate why, but as I have a raging headache and a 10 page paper due tomorrow that I'm delaying doing (thanks Lounge), this may not come out well.

All of my life, I have been very family oriented. My parents divorced when I was 2 or 3, but remained civil on my behalf and I spent time nearly 50/50 with my mother and with my father. I really don't think I could have asked for better parents, especially given the situation. It made it hard at holidays because they both wanted me to spend it with their families, and so I did.

On Thanksgiving and Christmas, I wake up at my mom's, travel to my maternal grandmother's house and hang out there with family until 1 or 1:30. Then I would go to my dad's house for about an hour, before we would leave for my aunt's house an hour and a half away, where most of his immediate family resides. Because I've spent so many holidays with my families, I had come to take it for granted in some ways...

I didn't take it for granted in that I didn't appreciate them or love them. That part is something that I learned well. When I left UIUC after my freshman year, part of the reason was to be with my family again for the year at juco. I love my family.

However, I took for granted how involved family would be in my life in the future. I had always just assumed that I would spend all of my holidays with my immediate family (including aunts uncles first cousins, etc...just like I did with my elder family). However, I am starting to realize that this is increasingly unlikely.

My mom is moving 6 hours away from my hometown on Saturday. That alone has really made me realize how wrong I will probably be about assuming I'd always have family around. This combined with my recent (last couple weeks) thoughts about moving states after graduation to teach anywhere I want....it is all just a lot.

I cherish my family above almost everything and three of my closest friends the last year or so have been my parents (stepmother included). It really sucks that in the last week or so I've realized that my thoughts about the future involvement with my family are becoming "more realistic."

I hope this contributed something to the discussion. I'm not really sure if it did. If anyone can fish a question or two out of that, I'd be more than willing to try and elaborate on specific things.

Shrug.