My extended family
I am an only child. But I have a lot of brothers and sisters.
This is because of two things - one, the way my family (a fairly traditional Korean one) works, and my habit of ‘adopting’ friends.
I’ll talk about the family thing first.
In Korean culture, much like many others, you refer to your cousins (and often your close friends) as ‘big brother’ or ‘big sister’. Why this is, exactly, I couldn’t say. It just is. So at family gatherings, I have a lot of ‘hyungahs’ (big brothers) and ‘noonahs’ (big sisters) as well as younger siblings (who I just call by their name).
Thus, I have a fairly large group of ’siblings’ as is. (At current count, I have six cousins on my mother’s side of the family, and fourteen on my father’s side, not counting second cousins and the like)
As for ‘adopting’ friends, some people just click with me. Others have been friends for so long, it feels like we’re family. These are the people that I call ‘little sis’ or ‘bro’ or what have you. I don’t have nearly as many of these ’siblings’, but they’re out there, and they count as family to me.
Most of the time, I don’t even realize I’ve stopped calling a friend by their name and by a sibling term until they point it out.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll have a ‘family’ with more than one hundred people in it by the time I pass on.