Family Changes

Having just attended a beautiful wedding on Sunday of two gorgeous friends, I can't help but notice how we're all growing up. Last night one of my friends told me that she has just gotten engaged. It seems that weddings are the new 21st birthdays to attend!

I still remember being a little freaked out when all my cousins got married, within the space of about two years we attended four weddings. It made me think that we'd all grown up a bit and really put into perspective how long ago the days of backyard cricket and commando rolling while playing Terminator 2 really were. Now that my friends are slowly starting to get married, I'm feeling really happy for my friends, because so many of them have found someone who they can share their life with and travel through new adventures together. This is getting a little soppy I know, but apparently I cry at weddings now so leave me alone. :)

We used to live from day to day, making sure that we could make rent, buy food, get the next show on and hopefully still have enough left over to throw a huge afterparty. Oh we also had to do our homework but that did end up a bit of an afterthought some days. We still do kind of live day to day, but now there are people to share that with.

Even at our parties, and they are often now more dinner party style than raucous affairs, we all seem to have settled down. Take dinner at Flick & Dale's reception. We all sat down to dinner in our pretty dresses with our boys in their suits (we know they're men but they are boys at heart) and who'd a thunk it but we all scrubbed up well! Aesthetics aside, we then proceeded to compromise on who got to eat which dish as the different choices were alternated according to seating. What can I say? I think we're all growing up.

More and more I hear my friends saying that if they don't do something now, or try something now, that it will never happen. I've even said the same myself. When just a couple of years ago we thought the world was ours, suddenly it seems that we're feeling the pressure of time.

It's hard to gain perspective of how far you've travelled in life while you're living it. Every birthday feels the same until you look back and remember that at your 12th birthday party you were playing hide-and-seek, while at your 21st you wore your first silk dress. Even looking back less far to my 19th birthday, an ungraceful affair on my part with my dislike of birthday celebrations in general, where we all got dressed up and headed to Crown (oh the class) for a buffet dinner, girls & boys dressed up for the outing. Some of us were in couples back then too, but the intervening four years have changed us all. We are settling down a bit. That's scary but that's okay too.

Over the last few years, I feel like I've found another family. I'm not related to them in any way other than our friendship but I'd still do almost anything to help them if they needed me. We are not family in the traditional sense, but I think we are an association of people who share common beliefs or activities, and that makes us family. The saying goes that you can't choose your family but I guess that's what makes this family of friends special. We did get to choose.