This story is about my poly friendsgiving this year and how so very different it was from years past.

I spent the majority of my youth just being wrong. I was the girl who read quietly in the corner in a family that valued prettiness, not intelligence, in a girl. I was too smart for relatives who didn’t know what to do with my curiosity, too big to be pretty like my sister, too outspoken, too awkward, too silly, too liberal, too incapable of being what a girl is supposed to be.

I spent my life rebelling against that--but, at the same time, I allowed it to seep into my bones. So I was me--sort of, sometimes, with some people, or I suppressed parts of myself that even I thought were
too much.

Friendsgiving this year made me realize how far behind I have left all of that.

It started out as a suggestion to my housemates that I thought would get shot down--what do you think about getting the whole polycule together for Friendsgiving this year?

My current immediate polycule is--

My husband/nesting partner, his girlfriend (who is also our housemate and has a boyfriend), his boyfriend (who also has nesting partners).

My boyfriend, his nesting partner who has another partner who has nesting partners, his girlfriend (who is also my something we haven’t defined yet).

And, very recently, my girlfriend--who, completely on trend, has a boyfriend.

It goes on from there, but I have confused myself at this point, so let's move on.

To my surprise, the housemates went for the idea, and the planning began. Not everyone in the polycule could make it, but we had a full house and something that looked like no Thanksgiving I had ever
experienced in my birth family.

There was turkey, sure, two of them in fact, and all of the expected side dishes, but what there wasn't was judgement, or discomfort, or me feeling as if I had to be anyone other than my big, awkward, messy, outspoken self.

Although some of the people had met each other, not everyone had, so the day, well, the evening, started with a bit of getting to know you energy. Basically--everyone who was sleeping with the same person had already met, but other introductions were necessary. We jumped into food fairly quickly, however, because apparently getting this particular polycule together is a bit like herding hamsters and we were eating later than planned--but this also gave us a shared task to bond over as we worked on getting everyone fed and comfortable.

After dinner was when the magic really happened, I walked around enjoying the overall glow and the love happening in my house, and I just marveled at the wonderful geekiness of my people.

At one point, my boyfriend and my nesting partner's boyfriend were deep into a conversation that was either about religious lore or Dungeons and Dragons lore--every time I thought I figured out which,
they would say something else that made me rethink. I still do not know.

My maybe girlfriend was sitting outside with our mutual boyfriend's nesting partner talking about quilting and living as a nomad and diesel engines.

Later, my nesting partner and his boyfriend were playing Japanese chess in the living room, which made less sense to me than the lore discussion in the other room. The conclusion I came to was that it is
chess with an extra layer of mindfuck.

And me? I was making sure people were taken care of, making every pun I could, interjecting with sociological theory, railing against the current administration, singing random song lyrics, and being silly as hell out of pure joy.

We ate, we laughed, we played games, and, when we found out several people had not yet seen Kpop Demon Hunters, we had a movie night.

By the time everyone left, my heart was so incredibly full. In this family, this bunch of wildly different people drawn together through various relationships, I felt loved and seen and accepted in a way that I
never did growing up.