Before the rest of my guests arrived for the unicorn-themed party I threw for myself last weekend, two of my closest friends appeared at my door to help me prep and to present me with a few hostess gifts. One of the boxes contained a festive trio of spices. While I inspected them, my friends explained their purpose with the affectionate bluntness that only a pair of Scorpios can offer.

“So you can start cooking real meals for yourself again,” said one.

“You ate frozen pizza three times last week,” said the other.

I’m sure I turned several colors as I mumbled a thank you and set the box down on my counter. It went without saying that I’d devoured each flat, cardboardy pizza in entirety on three separate days, leaving no leftovers and considering that and my breakfast Slim-Fast shakes to be sufficient for my daily nutrition. I wanted to protest and explain that I did occasionally cook for myself, but they’d already seen the contents of my fridge: multiple rows of condiments, a drawer of sliced cheddar, and several half-empty bottles of alcohol.

The truth is, I’ve only truly cooked when I’ve had company in the past three months. Otherwise, I’ve been falling back on my old bachelor habit of relying on frozen food and raw carrots for almost every meal.

And that’s not the only habit that’s been returning now that I’m solo again. Now that my free time is entirely my own, there’s nothing to stop me from staying up all night obsessively editing my latest drafts, or wasting entire Sunday afternoons binge-watching The Tick on Amazon. I can indulge in all the things that would drive a companion crazy, like alternating watching five minutes of a movie with reading five pages of my homework, or sing-narrating my entire laundry process. With no one to break up the routine, I repeat the same schedule every day, like an NPC in the blandest open world video game you’ve ever played. I may shake things up for a weekend adventure (usually prompted by someone else), but otherwise, I stay on my little track, blurring time via repetition.

In short, I’m functional but a bit off-kilter, like an abandoned robot trying to make meaning out of obsolete processes. Which sounds kinda sad now that I’ve typed it out, but it’s also the plot of Wall-E, so it’s probably fine.

For the most part, I enjoy the solitude and control of having space and time to myself. I’m not prone to loneliness and I excel at entertaining myself. As a kid, I imagined adulthood very much like this: solitary but not sad. Lord of my own private castle, attended by a small fleet of animal companions. Things could be much worse.

But then there are nights that are too cold and silent for me to find healing in. I fill my home with music and podcasts so I don’t have to endure the emptiness of those evenings, but that’s the emotional equivalent of putting a band-aid over the stub of a missing finger.

Luckily, I learned this lesson some time ago and have been deliberately applying it now:

Reach Out

It took me a long, long time to wrap my head around this one, despite a lifetime of supportive friends/family members and a massive archive of research that supports how emotionally, psychologically, and physically vital it is to nurture social bonds.

I’ve talked about this a lot: I’m an anxious little goblin. I’m irreconcilably weird. I am neurologically impaired when it comes to facial recognition. My brain has a lot going on it in that makes socializing uncomfortable, but I’ve worked hard to address my insecurities and forgive myself for my inevitable blunders.

I am so, so grateful that my hard work allowed me to reach out after my divorce and that I had so many people willing to listen to me and help.

Even though I shut a lot of those people out during my marriage’s decline.

I screwed up. I got scared and doubled down on my most intimate, most legally and emotionally committed relationship. I didn’t want to embarrass Kelsey (or myself) by talking to “outsiders” about what was going wrong, what was hurting me. I didn’t want to burden anyone with my suffering. I didn’t want to hear the people I loved telling me that my efforts to reanimate a dead relationship by conducting electricity through my own body like a mad scientist from a 1940s horror flick were futile and foolish.

This, of course, made it all the more traumatic when the actual separation occurred with the suddenness and shock of a beheading, my head cleaved from my shoulders with altogether too much ease, like the act of discarding me was as effortless as passing a knife through warm butter. It felt like all the love and trust I thought I’d been pouring into our marriage had been sucked through a black hole instead, leaving me hollow-chested and headless in my empty house.

(How embarrassing.)

Fortunate, then, that rather than mounting a red-eyed steed and haunting Sleepy Hollow in search of vengeance, I corrected my mistake of self-isolation and reached back out to my loved ones.

Our relationships are shields. Our true friendships are mystical healing pods (you know, like in Voltron). There is so much power in the simple act of listening to and understanding another human being. That’s why reaching out is such potent medicine.

I’m not always good at taking my medicine. As much as I’m working to accept myself, warts and all, I still fear making a fool of myself in front of others. But it’s not fair to leave all the work of reaching out to my friends. I have to remind myself to text first sometimes, or follow up on a situation one of my besties is going through, or schedule the next session for my D&D campaign, even when I’m scared of being a crappy DM.

Which is part of why I threw a goofy party for myself last week, despite my anxiety. I wanted to reach out and put some sunshine back into my life and (hopefully) the lives of my friends. We decorated unicorn headbands, ate unspeakable quantities of snacks, and played dumb games together for a few hours. It was nice. I want to throw more events like that, random excuses to get the gang together (a daunting task for all us busy adults).

I’m grateful for everyone who has responded to my attempts to connect. Whether by cheering me up with nonsensical memes or including me on random excursions or checking in to make sure I’m eating vegetables, I know I have a wonderful band of people looking out for me.

My heart is still broken. I don’t know if I still have access to the depths of love and trust that I used to take for granted within myself. But in order to keep finding wonder in the world, I have to keep reaching. So I’ll continue trying my best, connecting to the people I love, and cooking meals for myself again, maybe even with vegetables.

You know what I love? Found families. Found families are my JAM. There's something amazing about growing up and developing a new family unit with which to navigate the stormy sea of adulthood.

Also, found family members are obligated to laugh at the dumb crap I post.

I'm lucky enough to have a great found family AND a great blood family. But today, I'm focusing on the dynamics of my found family. Sorry, blood fam.

I read somewhere (here, actually) that millennials don't feel like adults until age 29 or later, largely because the key "grown up" milestones (like financial independence, owning a house, having kids) are less accessible in today's economy than they were in our parents' economy. I often feel like a little kid playing dress-up (in old hand-me-down clothes from my mother because I can't afford new clothes) when I'm sitting at my desk at work. Like I said in a previous post, it all feels like a desperate game of pretend.

Which is why found families are especially important to many people in my generation. It's reassuring to have a group of people on your side to play pretend with, to fill in for the guidance and protection of the folks who raised you.

Particularly blessed within a found family is the Mom Friend. We've all either had one or been one, regardless of generation. Typically, it's the friend who sends you those, "Did you get home safe?" texts, or excels at herding and caring for drunk friends, or dispenses warm advice (even when you don't want to hear it).

In my various friend circles, I know of a few such pseudo-moms. And I have friends who have now become actual moms (holy wowza!). They are pillars of strength, beacons of hope, and carriers of Tylenol. These are the true Mom Friends.

And then there's me.

Usually, I'm the Whiskey Cousin of the friend group. The one that's reeeaaal heckin' strange, occasionally funny in a living cartoon character kind of way, and should not be trusted with adult responsibilities (or sharp objects).

But found families need some kind of parental unit to maintain order, and as they say in Jurassic Park: "Life, uh, finds a way."

I have falsely ascended to Mom Friend status within my household. Like Trump in the White House, I have no business being there, I'm woefully ill-prepared, and my actions could easily lead to utter disaster.

Why did this happen?

I'm the breadwinner of the family, kinda. I have a stable job (achieved largely through good luck, good timing, and good connections) with a predictable flow of income. I have no debts to pay (once again, through no merit of my own and purely through the generosity, forethought, and fortunate circumstances of my birth family). Because of this, it makes sense to have most of the household bills under my name. I'm in charge of a lot of the budget (and in turn, the meal plans), which grants a certain authority and responsibility to me.
I'm neurotic. I worry about absolutely everything, and I worry about the fact that I worry about everything. So I fret over money, my friends' well-being, the diversity of food we're eating, having plenty of toilet paper on hand at all times, etc.
I'm paranoid that things won't get done if I don't do them, whether or not that's true.
I'm the oldest member of the household, and also the only one to be the eldest sibling.
I compulsively give out advice, regardless of how much I actually know about a topic.
It's my fault that we're all living together, making me the inadvertent glue of our quirky family.

I tend to be the one making decisions and delegating tasks to Kelsey and Cade. I'm usually in charge of meals, or at least am the one that is asked the mom-est of all questions: "When's dinner?" I'm the one who gets up in the middle of the night if the puppies cry (and also the one who almost always takes them out in the morning, regardless of our collective work schedules). I do most of the grocery runs, or when we all go together, I'm the one slapping Kelsey's wrist for sneaking Fruity Pebbles into the cart and getting unnecessarily flustered.

I take on a lot of Mom Friend responsibilities in keeping the house together, but I'm not a good Mom Friend. I'm the equivalent of the mom that had kids too early, is prone to emotional breakdowns, and gets wine-drunk on the back porch and tells her kids way too much about her sex life.

Fortunately, I'm not alone.

Actual footage of me, Cade, and Kelsey getting crunked in the kitchen (Source)

I may have Mom Friend tendencies, but so do Kelsey and Cade.

Cade is absurdly thoughtful and gave us Christmas gifts so perfect that Santa would feel sub-par as a gift-giver next to her. She makes tea to comfort us, offers to help in any way she can, and helps keep the house from being a cluttery disaster hole.

Kelsey has repaired broken doors, torn porch screens, missing tiles, and more. Does that make her a Dad Friend? I mean, between that, the beer, baseball hats, and the terrible jokes... But she also introduces delicious recipes to us, decorates for the holidays, and often greets me with a bourbon cocktail when I come home from work (and if that's not right out of a 1950s Home Economics book, I don't know what is).

We're a bunch of surrogate moms to each other, and I think that's a good way to be. We learned lessons of love from our parents, and it's nice to pass those on to each other, using our various abilities to solve the diverse challenges of growing up in the 21st century.

Perhaps we're not top-shelf Mom Friends, but I think we make a good family. And really, everyone could stand to mother each other a little more.