Shamelessly emotional.

Well, four days is just the wrong amount of time for a cross country visit. After three days, you've just begun to be one with the time change. And then on the fourth day, you're back on a plane losing hours as you fly. My body has been pretty pissed at me this week for putting it through all that craziness. But of course, it was well worth it. There aren't really words to express why it seems to be a common understanding that all of us in the CC find it important to be home together when those among us are going through tough times. Usually we come back not knowing what to say, or what to do, or how we can help at all. But I know that if anything can be done, we would make it happen. And I've come to realize that usually we help by not doing anything at all. We simply hang out, treating each other as we normally would - being inappropriate in public, hugging in the middle and all that sort of thing. It seems that when most everything we know in life is being yanked out from under one of us, to be reassured that this group of people is still there, showing us what is good and normal, what is solid and stable and always there, no matter what, is the best thing we can give one another. Not only for maybe the person who is dealing with an extremely difficult time, but for the rest of us too, reassuring us that when tough times come, as we all know they will, that we will have something and someone (many someones) to lean on. I have, as I think many other people have, had to explain to people what my group of friends is like. And I'm not ashamed to say that I usually end up emphasizing how our group is SO special and SO amazing. We've stayed so close since high school, we're all over the country and we see each other as much as possible. We've made friends as we've all taken our seperate journeys, but this group at home is what we come back to. It's no less than a family. A family that we chose. I wonder if other people's families comment on how lucky they think we are. My parents always mention how they think I'm lucky to have the group of friends that I do. They comment on our support, and our bond. They ask about all of my friends, and I ask my friends about their families. I just...It is times like this weekend (when the rallying has commenced) that I feel extraordinarily lucky.