Freedom
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This is not going to be a July 4th “rah-rah” or “America is great!” post. If that’s what you are looking for, there are probably a million posts like that all over the internet today. Go read one of those instead. This is going to be about self-care.
I’ve been going through it since about October of last year. Silently at first because I kept my thoughts to myself. I started thinking about my step-dad whom I hadn’t talked to for many years. Nothing happened between us. He got remarried in the early 2000s and we just stopped talking as much. Eventually we fell out of touch and I would wonder how he was doing, but I didn’t figure he had any more responsibility to me, sort of like all the other people that cycled in and out of my family over the years. My second step-dad? I never saw him again after the divorce (he didn’t like kids so I didn’t see him, or my mother, very often for most of my early childhood). I never even met my third step-father.
Anyway, I digress. In November of last year, I worked up the courage to send my step-father a letter. Weeks went by and I didn’t get a response so I figured his non-response was a response. But then I got the letter back as “undeliverable”. By then it was Christmas and I wanted to wait until after the holidays to contact any long-lost family because I didn’t want to ruin their holidays or my own.
Eventually I sent a new letter and in early February we started talking again. We had a LOT of catching up to do but it’s been good getting to know one another as adults. We have a lot in common and some similarities in our personalities. We talk quite a bit about his time with my relatives and sharing stories and experiences.
It was around that same time in February that I did a DNA test and worked up the courage to contact the man my family eventually told me was my father (at age 19 when I found an obituary for my mother’s first husband and the man I thought was my father). With there being so much lying and manipulation from my relatives, at 40-something I still didn’t know who my father was, among several other mysteries.
I don’t know if any of my relatives read this, but that’s sort of the whole point of where I’m going with this post…
Over the winter I created a profile on ancestry and while researching, I saw my biological father also had a profile, which popped up when I was researching my mother’s first husband. I contacted him and didn’t get a response. Weeks went by and in the meantime I found him on facebook. I worked up the courage and sent him a message there and some time passed before it occurred to me that he may not have seen my message because we weren’t “friends” on facebook. I then sent a friend request to my half-sister whom I’d only met once back in 1999. Fast-forwarding a bit, but she got me in contact and my father responded that night. I’ve written about that in previous posts, but at the time it seemed like things were going well, considering the circumstances.
I really thought I could have a relationship with at least my half-sister, if not my two half-brothers. Maybe my timing was bad. Maybe it was too much. We talked for about a week or two before things just fell off. I have backed away, thinking maybe she needs time. Or, maybe she just doesn’t like me. Who knows. I kind of expected to hear from her when we matched from my DNA test, but she didn’t say anything so neither did I.
Things have also fallen completely off with my father (and DNA did determine he is my father, so at least that mystery is solved). We were talking every day and most every night in March. He told me he loved me every night before I went to sleep and I never said it back. It was too much too soon and he said he understood. But I feel like I was too much because eventually I stopped seeing the little green dot by his profile photo that indicated he was online. I don’t use facebook much but realized he must have turned off the setting that showed when he was online. So I backed off for that, and several other reasons.
I noticed that when I emailed him my childhood photos that he requested, he didn’t even acknowledge that he got them. He didn’t ask anything like “when was that?” or “what’s going on in that photo?”. Just nothing and I took it as lack of interest. When I emailed him stories from my childhood, because he said he wanted to know everything about me, he also never asked any follow-up questions. When we talked on the phone or on video, I found after the first couple of calls he did the majority of the talking and sharing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed hearing his stories and getting to know him, but I wish conversations had been more even and he had gotten to know me and my family. After our first conversation I don’t think he never asked about my kids, his grandkids. After the first conversation, he didn’t seem to want to hear about my childhood or really get to know who I am as an adult.
I needed time to warm up, build trust. I was meeting my father for the first time without my mother and grandmother’s influence and actually getting to know him. But maybe it was still too much because things just sort of fell off. We stopped talking every day. He stopped telling me he loved me at night. In one of our earlier conversations, I asked how often was too often and he told me that if he didn’t hear from me in a week that he would check in. The little green dot on messenger stopped appearing. I took the hint, I think. Now weeks go by and he doesn’t check in.
On my end, it feels like I’ve been abandoned once again. Things have fallen apart for a third time. Once when I was a newborn, again in 1999/2000, and now in 2023.
We haven’t had an actual conversation in months. Our last phone conversation was in March. We spoke briefly on messenger in April when I got some of my childhood medical records. In May he sent me photos from his cruise and I told him I hoped they had a good time. I wished him a Happy Father’s Day and we haven’t spoken since. I don’t know what I did wrong. In March or April I removed messenger from my phone because it was a constant reminder of my failure.
I just don’t know but I’ve spent the past weeks wondering what I could have done differently this time.
I’ve let all of this take over my life for the past year. I’ve spent countless hours researching family trees and pondering different stories, wondering who was telling the truth. Weeks and months I spent building up the courage to contact my biological father and my half-sister. Hours I spent trying to get my childhood medical records, in hopes of clues that would explain why things happened like they did when I was born.
It’s all gotten to a point, not to where I don’t care, but I just can’t let it consume my thoughts and time like this. I have to move on and do other things that I had let fall by the wayside.
I have to free myself.
My step-father and I talk every day, sometimes throughout the day by text. We’ve done FaceTime and he’s met my youngest on video. Every day he asks how everyone is, what everyone is doing. We still talk about things that happened with relatives, but we mostly talk about daily life stuff and things we’re doing. Over the weekend I spent some time getting access to old photos and downloading them from Flickr. I sent him photos of my kids when they were babies because he said he and his wife wanted to see them. Sometimes I text with his wife and we talk about gardening. Still, I worry about being “too much”.
I also got my website back up so I can work on that. I’ve been reading more since we’ve been going to the library. I got on medication for a condition I’ve been trying to live with for ages. I have a good bunch of tomato plants going this summer and am already thinking about fall garden plans. I picked up a knitting project that’s been waiting for me. I started playing animal crossing again and finally decorating my island. With my step-father’s help I am going to label all of my childhood photos, many of which he mailed to me.
In addition to labeling photos, I have written a terrible memoir that explains my childhood and how things went down with my relatives. By now you’ve probably noticed I call them “relatives” rather than “family”. I have also written notes about everything I learned in the past 10 months. Some information and stories are conflicting but it’s what I know and hopefully if my kids ever wonder about why things were the way they were, they don’t have to spend months and years researching in hopes of finding a clue.
To any relatives that may be reading this — I have learned and pieced together so much over the years. I worried about sharing all the details of my story, but now I don’t know why I ever did. It’s not me that should be feeling any shame. I’m freeing myself of that as well. I’ll be sharing as much as I feel comfortable sharing here.
