To All the Girls I've Loved Before Part IV

This is easily the most embarrassing and uncomfortably revealing one. I tried for years to convince myself that I liked Dandypratt's sister. Now, Dandypratt's sister was a nice girl, but to be honest she and I had absolutely nothing in common. She simply wasn't my type. In my attempts to believe that I was honestly interested in her, I tried desperately to have conversations with her, to no avail. We had nothing to talk about. No doubt she was weirded out by my forced interest--I was her brother's best friend, after all, not a potential suitor--which only made things more awkward. I only gave up on this hopeless cause after she somewhat reluctantly agreed to accompany me to the Mistletoe Ball my senior year and obviously had a miserable time, despite my efforts to ensure that she enjoy herself.

The "liking" came down to this: Whenever I imagined myself with her (as in married to her, at some point in the future), it was in relation to her family, as her brother's brother-in-law and to a much greater extent, as her father's son-in-law. I had always been hugely jealous of Dandypratt's seemingly perfect family, and though they gladly treated me as one of their own, the father frequently referring to me as his other son, I feared that without a permanent tie the connection would fade as I grew older.

In the ten years since I left Hawaii, that connection has faded somewhat, but it has not completely disappeared, as I feared it would. I still keep in touch with Dandy's parents--they just sent a Christmas package for S-Boogie and Little Dude--but it's not like I visit them every weekend. I will always value my relationship with them, particularly the memory of what they meant to me as an insecure adolescent, but something happened that I never anticipated: I grew up. Surrogate parents, like real parents, take a different role and a different importance once one starts a family of one's own. And, also to my surprise, that's okay.