Once or twice a year, we gather. We cook, take walks, open bottles, play games. We celebrate. We grief, sometimes. We argue, often. We catch up, check on each other, hug tightly, and leave again.

It’s exhausting, to be together like that. It’s warming, it’s wonderful – but it’s exhausting, because we constantly try to erase a distance. And bittersweet, because we need that distance to flourish.

How can you love people so much, how can be so much like them, share the same hair, the same heart, yet feel so free from them?

How can you actually be the same flesh, yet all be your own person, your own entity?

There are so many resemblances in a family, in my family, yet so many differences. It strikes me every time. Being together opens a Pandora box, brings up familiar songs, flavours, emotions.

I relish in it every time, until reality hits. Like an arrow through a cotton sheet, it reminds me of a world that’s mine. Of another family, the one I’ve met, the one I’ve made.