There are nine of us living in a small flat here, all between the ages of 18 and 20. We come from all over the USA, Spain, and Germany. You could not imagine a more diverse group; we have everyone from the rapper wanna-be from Cincinnati to the maternal intellectual to the crazy German to the Barca obsessed Spaniards. We have different ideologies, different opinions, different privileges, and totally different personalities. Not two people are from the same place, and we all live such different lives.
However, we're a family. We support each other. We fight with each other. We throw chocolate at each other. We laugh with each other. These eight other people, who I didn't even know three months ago, are my family. They know me and I know them. We all know our little quirks and our big quirks, and we know what to say and do when someone's feeling down. We know how to defuse situations and fight constructively now. If any of us needs something, there's someone we can go to. We have traditions and habits and inside jokes.
We realized that we've finally hit that point where we're officially bonded irreversibly. We Karmielniks, we're a family. You can hate your family or love your family, but they're always your family. When we go away, we know we'll have something to come home to and someone to miss. Even if we split up, we'll always remember that one chocolate fight, or the fight at the club, or the game at the pub, or all the soccer games, or getting lost on the way to soccer, or getting lost during Closed Shabbat, or the ridiculous discussion during Closed Shabbat, or Jeff telling lame jokes, or looking up lame jokes online, or ALWAYS being online, or ALWAYS playing music, or fighting over what music to play, or fighting over milk and chocolate.
Tomorrow I leave for ten days, and it's going to be so different. I haven't spent for than two days away from any of these people since we met, and now I won't see them for over a week. What am I going to do without Becca being my mommy? How am I going to figure out what to wear without Noa's closet? Whose music will I have to overplay if Jeff's not there? Who is going to challenge me to soccer contests without Ariel with me? If Naomi doesn't ask me how my day was because she actually cares, who will? If Alyson is gone, whose crazy outfits am I going to laugh at? Who am I going to help find stuff without Jake losing his things? Who is going to shout, "nein nein nein!" if Dan's not here?
Just imagining being without my family is mind-blowing. My crazy Karmiel kehilah!
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