You see I broke the spoken rule of my father this week. "Honey, information is something to be shared on a need to know basis" I grew up with this rule meaning several things, mind your own business, dont share family information with strangers, and similar things of that nature. This week I said to myself, fuck his rules. He has brought little to anything to my table as a human, offspring, or what ever you may call me in relation to him. I decided I am following my own path and his paranoid mental issues will not get in the way or my or anyone else's happiness if i have any say in it. So i did the forbidden deed and passed along a phone number. That phone number was used. Here comes the shock. He called me, yes paranoid that it was all some big lie, but not angry as I thought he might be. Yes the whole conversation lasted all of 2 minutes and was completely about him, other than a How are you doing in California question that I know very well he has no interest in the real answer to. I said I am fine. He said as he always does that he is on the way to pick up his wife. She must work really odd hours or several jobs because no matter what time of day we speak he is on the way to pick her up from work. I have decided that is his way of trying to be polite and say bye. I am glad that he seems to have taken the phone call well. I hope him and his brother can speak and learn about one another. I still have odd hope in my fathers ability to snap the fuck out of it and be a human to others who he ganes nothing but joy in communicating with. Or even ganes nothing at all. He you see is a man stuck on self, and in being stuck on self is also stuck on instant gratification. If it has to wait til tomorrow either he didnt want it in the first place or he doesn't have a clue its going to happen.
I used to be mad that this man walked out of my life, but now I thank him for staying away. Yes to hear that my uncle E didnt even know I was alive when he knew my lil sister B was bothers me a bit. Its a small sting now, compaired to all that has happened. But the thing that bothers me the most is that he has kept me from potential knowledge. Knowledge that can help me through my life. The first bit was knowledge of a father's love. That is bad enough to go without, but to also cut me off from family in addition to himself. That is not his choice to do. He can walk away and be a deadbeat, but it is my right as a family member to know the rest of the family. I have no idea what he ganed or avoided in keeping my existance from anyone. I have no idea what else I will learn about family in the years to come. I simply long for that word that so many people take for granted. Especially people with such a large one as I have. People usually can't imagine having as many siblings as I do, and then to imagine never even meeting them until you are an adult. Some of them lost for great whiles. Then after meeting them wondering why I tried so hard in the first place.
The only sibling I cant ever reach again, is the sibling that means the most in my life. In realising this i dont want to miss out anymore on the ones i can reach. But that isnt up to me. I am not in control of their actions or life choices just as they are not in control of mine. I talk to most of them from time to time. We share our likes and dislikes, similarities and differences. But I do not feel that I know them. I do not feel a bond as close as I feel a sibling should feel. And yet I love them. I miss them. I long for their happiness as much as I long for my own.
I try to explain my feelings to my friends, or even just to feel them. I have such mixed feelings this week. My friends can barely imagine their own lives, and mine is well too complicated for them to grasp. So I try to take a step back and just feel. But I feel like crying and I dont know if that is crying for joy, for sorrow, for the child in me, or the child that will soon be my own. I so desperately wanted family growing up. I wanted to belong, but not to a social group of peers, but to my own family. I never felt I had one. My brith mom had her family before I came along, they were grown by the time I could effectively communicate. My dads family was far off back east, and may has well have been on the moon, as I was not allowed to travel to see them. Then there is the family that saw how sad my situation was, or so they felt it was. They took me in, gave me a substitute sense of balance in my life. Tried to fill me with the lord and love and healthy foods and life choices. They had their own problems though and two kids that met all their needs as a family. I never felt I belonged.
I struck out to make my own family and fell for a woman who was not healthy for me. I am glad though I ended up learning it the hard way that I am ok on my own and need no one. Now I am in a rough place where I want to bring a life into this world, but dont know if that is the right thing to do for that life.
Will it long for the family I longed for. Or will I be enough family for that child. Will this child possibly spark some of my current family members desire to be family. Or will it push them away even further. I know my neice on my mothers side really loves the same type of family I miss. I know she will love my child and we will work to have family meals and holidays together. But will it just be us three and whom ever we are dating or married to at the time. Or will it be larger and happier like we remember in the late 80s/early 90s. I can only hope.
I can only hope that I have matured past all of this, and that I have surrounded myself with good people who may not be blood but they are my family. And that family will nurture and support my child in life and happiness. I truely believe blood doesnt make a family....but that doesnt mean that because you are blood you cant be a family too. It is never too late for people to share love with the ones they were born knowing. It is never wrong to extend a helping hand or a kind word to the ones you are suposed to love. Remember that when you have the chance to make a phone can and think twice about it...remember it is ok to call just to say hi and i was thinking of you.
Hugs to all who read this. I know if you got this far at least you care in your own way. And a hug to my little monkey if you ever get to see this. I cant wait to show you around.
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This just breaks my heart. I read it twice, and I wish I could give you a hug and let you know I care about your pain. I can only tell you I'm very glad you did what you did -- glad to know you're my niece and glad for the favor you did in enabling me to reconnect with my brother T and your dad. You took a huge weight of wondering off my head, a melancholy load that's been there for years and years. I find you pretty amazing, and am eagerly looking forward to strengthening our connection in the coming years.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's just possible that your father did tell me about you more than 20 years ago and I forgot. I hardly ever saw him, and so much upheaval has happened to my family members and me in the intervening years that it's more than a little likely my brain just could not store -- without further reinforcement -- the spoken fact of you over more than two decades. I actually saw J and B, on several occasions covering many hours, and so can remember them. But I most definitely could not swear to it in court that your father never told me about you. Looking back on it now, I tend to think that he must have and I simply lost that essential detail to time and age.
No, when you told me that you hadn't heard of me I completely tossed it up to being over a long while since you had spoken with my father. It was when he called me and without me asking he verified that he never told you I was alive. His words were "I never even told him you existed, so to get a call from him claiming to have found you and that you gave him my number" then some more rambles about how you found me. It was not until I explained that I found you that he calmed down and seemed happy. He probably has no idea the implications of telling someone that they have not told people you exist. It is outside of his realm of thought. Probably thought is his cracked out way that he was protecting me from something or another. I think he still has little to any clue that I have accomplished anything in life. Everything is relative to his life or isn't and college or a career just isnt in his paradigm.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and commenting. Never read too deeply. Emotions can be raw but I put no negativity out in my rawness.
HUG