Sometimes I'm like that long lost half-sister on your father's side, or that broke-ass friend. I only show up when I want something from you.
I've been stupid-busy with clients and projects, then had the brilliant idea to throw myself into my husband's website idea 100% on top of the craziness. What? Yes I'm crazy, crazy in love with him, and crazy about the concept behind the site. And crazy from lack of sleep lately too, but that's a story you're used to hearing out of me.
So anyway, I know I've talked in the past about the dysfunctional dynamics surrounding my family, right? My father had already been married and had 5 kids before he and ma met, and due to whatever circumstances, basically, I had 5 sisters, 2 of whom I'd met as a very young child, the other 3 of which I never met, and I could barely remember what their names were, and consistently misspelled 2 of them... Mom and he divorced when I was a little kid, and most of the history on my father's side slipped into that place that's easy for a kid to accept - out of sight out of mind, ignorance is bliss, wtf ever you want to call it. Till something like a year and a half ago, when my half-sister (one of the 2 I'd met as a child, whose name I *could* spell) calls me out of the blue after, well, nearly 30 years.
I didn't deal well with it then, and frankly, I haven't bothered to exactly embrace the new arrangements thanks to the way things went at the time. She now lives with my mother and they seem happy as pigs in shit to be reunited. I for one, lived my whole life without that side of my family, still feel suspicious of the fact that she simply re-appeared out of nowhere after all these years, wanting/needing something. Oddly, she (and the rest) had been unable to find me for 3 decades prior to that - not even to tell me that my father was dead (which she of course, plopped into my lap a mere 5 minutes into our first phone call. "Yeah my father died, my son died...."
Yeah, again, that's another rant.
A few months ago, I decided to shy away from Myspace in favor of FaceBook, and long-lost-sister sent me a friend request. I let it sit for a few months, not really sure what to do or how I felt about her being part of my daily life, privy to every status update I put into the cyberworld.
Then I gave in to my sense of duty and obligation (or guilt, whichever) and added her. Within a few weeks, I've got all sorts of people requesting to be on my friends list. Names I do not recognize, names I think I *might* possibly recognize... family members, ones I was vaguely aware of, and ones I was completely unaware of.
Frankly, it's freaking me out. It's like having someone prattle off a list of characters in a soap opera you've never seen before, and never had a lot of interest in, and aren't entirely sure you even care about. I have no idea who these people are, and in a very real sense, they have nothing to do with my life.
Today I was given access to one of those Ancestry.Com websites for the Monahan family.
So far all it's done is bring up a painful past, remind me of people who spent their whole lives not caring enough about me to even keep in touch. They were adults when my mother and father split up, I was eight years old, if they wanted a relationship with me then they should have stepped up back then. They didn't bother and now all of a sudden they want to tell me how many family members there are and where they live and how many have facebook pages, and show me pictures and paperwork dating back to 1920.
It's weird, it's uncomfortable. I don't even know what my father's parents names were, how am I supposed to learn all these new people. How am I supposed to assimilate myself into their family? Should I even try? Do they have time? Do I have the energy? Do any of us have the room in our realities for all the new family ties?
Is it worth even worth it? I don't know. Part of me feels like, why should I bother at the age of 37 to go through the trouble when none of them could do so before?
So there's what I want. Your questions, your advice, your input. Cuz I'm too weirded out about it, too angry from the past, to even trust my own judgement about it all right now.
And while you're at it, ya reckon you can tell me why I *ALWAYS* misspell the word judgment? kthanx
