Christmas with family

I have a fantastic family. Not only my flesh and blood but mostly the one I have in my friends family. I am an oly child but this was seen as been a benefit to me not a detriment but only because of my best friend and my relationship to him. My best friend from reception or in American speak kindergarten, is still my closest and best friend and his sister and brother are my virtual brother and sister, his mum and dad the other parents I never had.

Without the gift of these fantastic additions to my growth and experience I would have been a major disappointment and become something I do not wish to think about but unfortunately see every day when I role play and enjoy my hobby of choice. I would have been faithless, angry, impatient, probably violent, and definitely dead before now. The person I would have been is there hiding in my soul, waiting to recover and get up from its burial so long ago. I know it as I see, read and enjoy the company of people who didn't get blessed with my extended family and the incredible love and security they provided.

Instead my friend showed me his childish faith, tried to save a friend we both knew from his downward spiral and anti-religious rhetoric, gave me patience when I wanted to destroy myself, gave me understanding when I needed to talk to another, gave me a series of events that allowed me to vicariously experience the up's and down's of love and romance, showed me the idea of joy, and for a very long time allowed me to see past his barriers. His family tried to show me how to be a better person, taught me how a faithful family can operate, gave me love as if I was another member of the family, and has always been connected to the better part of my nature.

I have never fully shared my inner workings with him as I know much of the man I know now is anouther being than the person I once knew past the barriers, but when I have a chance to see him and his wife I am always transported into another time and the better part of my nature comes to the fore.

Last night was one of those nights. I got to enjoy the night with my family, their husbands and wives and their children. It was a night to remember where I wasn't the odd one out. I was in the presence of people I love and truly care about. Enjoying the company. Enjoying the fellowship. Without jealousy. WIthout the normal pain of my existence. Just a chance to be and see the best in others. .

Then as left tired and spent I saw with terrifying clarity who I would I have been without them. Without their structure and their faith. with the generalised Australian belief system instead of a strong moral, sexual and religious code. I would have been much poorer without them and I started to think about all the other people I love and care about; all my role-playing friends, all the guys and girls from uni, all my school friends, all the guys from my work groups, and I started to see how few friends really are there with the incredible riches of love and faith that I have been blessed with.

I have watched friends lose themselves in love and life, breaking hearts, losing love, causing upset and hatred, actively inviting discord, causing pain, acting in Machiavellian manners, hating others, and taking passion so seriously that they forget to enjoy it. I have seen people forget to live a life and instead desperately fight for the moment forgetting the whole, living for the momentary pleasure, forgetting the pain that comes for themselves or others in that action. Others choose the path of excess and need with drunkenness, orgies, sex, violence, discord, hatred, drugs, passion, pain, fetishes, purchases, debt, and I have been scraping up the brain cells and credit cards of these people for years now. Sin of all sorts has been around me briefly touching me and the demons in them are as obvious as the angels in the songs of praise to god. I could have been one of the many Australians that are part of them, lost in the easy way out but instead I was given a gift of family and friends that made me a very different person.

The strength of love they have given me lead me to my god, the grace they held me by allowed me to erect the barriers to my empathic abilities and allowed me to be silent in myself, their boisterousness broke my sloth and laziness prompting me to action, their sense of justice allowed me to stand up for others and get cut down for it losing my job but not my faith. Their hope for me kept me moving when I was dead and wanted death so much it was in every fibre of my being. Their knowledge of sexual morality was instilled into me allowing me to hold off advances and the biting back the choices of drugs and sex when they were presented keeping me from being so easily overcome by them. Their understanding of alcohol and joy has allowed me to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol and fellowship and not take the path of excess and desire. Their joy in the company of each other has made it so that I want the same thing. and their understanding of death, their understanding of pain and anger has allowed me to grieve and slowly heal from the loss of my first love and her murder.

I cannot but help thank them for this gift and a wish to impart at least the basic level of understanding to others.