It Was All Wrong

Where was I? It’s been a while since I wrote on this - busy with work, kids, kittens, life. Y’all know how it goes. 

On February 26, 2023 I can see where I chatted with my half-sister by text. Around 1:30 in the afternoon I messaged her to say I hoped she was having a good day. We talked about the weather where we each live and she sent me some photos from where she was living. She said she’d lived near or on the beach, but moved in January for a change of scenery. The previous year she’d been living in Florida, but it just sounded like she was moving around a lot. I asked her if she’d like to chat on the phone sometime that week. She agreed and gave me her work schedule. She seemed pretty open and was sharing about her childhood, her experience with being homeschooled and growing up with a very religious household. I get the sense that religion was dictated more from her mother, but I can’t actually tell since I never met her. 

And then she said something that set me right on edge. Now, I’m very accommodating and give a wide allowance for people to be awkward without judging them. I have said things that didn’t come out right, were downright mortifying - words that I replay in my head and still cringe from the embarrassment of having uttered them. I get it. Sometimes things don’t come out right.

Anyway, I shared my kid’s pronouns and she said that her kid had “played a joke on her” by “trying to pretend to be a they/them”. Now I don’t know the situation in the least, but I can see a scenario where a child tries to approach a parent to share this information, it doesn’t go well, and so they try to play it off as a joke. Not my circus so I didn’t comment. 

Then she said my kid “must be confused” and “haven’t figured themselves out yet”, that my kid was “having an identity crisis” and my kid would figure it out when they got their period. 

I shit you not. 

That should have been my last message with her. But I gave leeway when I should have told her to fuck right off. This is someone who has never met me, never met my kids, never had a conversation with me, nothing and commenting like she knows nothing at all about it. The audacity, as the younger folks say. But I let her have her uneducated opinion and moved on with my day. 

I was still chatting some online with my father, but his wife was having some medical issues and I recognized that he was busy with that. He told me right off that she had a brain tumor (if I recall correctly) and that it was genetic, not much available in the way of treatment, and I guess they were just managing symptoms. We had spoken on the phone on February 25 (Saturday) and the following day she had some issues that led to him taking her to the emergency room. 

I talked to my stepfather and he shared some stories with me about my mother and what she was like while they were married. He told me that at their rental house that she painted a room pink for me and bought either a crib or a bed. When they moved to the trailer, the second bedroom was set up for me, but I only ever spent one or two nights with them. I remember one, but will concede that there might have been a second overnight stay that I don’t remember. They were divorced by the time I was 5 so I may have forgotten.

Either way, it was very limited contact because, according to him, my mother and grandmother were always fighting. (Note to my mother, in case you are reading this - I know you were unaware or since forgotten where I lived while you were married to your second husband, so this is your reminder since apparently no one knew where I was living. Which is honestly just embarrassing for you.)

He shared one incident where my mother and grandmother were fighting, but they still went over to visit me and my grandmother locked herself in a bedroom. He said my grandmother later apologized for giving him the cold shoulder. 

The more he shared, the more my mother just sounded like a miserable person who was always squabbling with someone, upset with someone over minor infractions, trying to have control, and honestly,  can see where she would have had trouble with a baby or small child. Babies and small kids are needy, loud, don’t always do what you want when you want, and interfere with your social/dating life. 

When I was a teenager, they reconnected and tried again. It didn’t work out and I don’t know how it got to this, but my mother told him that I didn’t want to see him anymore. That couldn’t have been further from the truth! Thankfully he knew better and that’s how we got started going out to get pizza and a movie. But what a shit thing to do to try and use me to hurt him. I was always a pawn though - between my mother and father, my mother and grandmother, my mother and her second husband. 

I also injured my back around this time - I’m pretty sure it was the 26th when I was working in the yard. This gave me extra time to think about these conversations and information I was learning.

On February 28, 2023 I wrote “I feel like I’m too much, trying too hard, something. I need to back off.” Only three days into contact with my father and I can sense that it’s all wrong. He was dealing with his own health issues, along with his wife’s. I felt a distance, even from my half-sister. I had asked if she’d like to talk because she said that texting was the “worst possible way of communicating”. She gave me her work schedule and then nothing. I felt like I was trying to nail jello to a wall.

It’s such a strange thing, this lack of interest. If my half-sister or some relative took the effort and courage to find me, I would love to have a conversation on the phone or zoom or something. I would ask them all kinds of questions about them, their life, their kid(s), everything. If it was feasible, I’d want to meet them. But this isn’t how things were with them and I was repeating history from back in 1999 when I contacted him and the weeks it took for him to want to meet me. 

My father wasn’t too busy though, if his facebook posts were any indication. I could see him posting random stuff, commenting on political posts - he had time to post but not to talk to me, I guess. I wrote that I felt “like I’m walking into heartbreak again unless I stop myself from repeating history”. I decided to take a step back to see if either of them would reach out or if this was going to be all the effort coming from me. 

He posted something about the healthcare system and said “I’m the one who doesn’t really give a damn about living”. I wrote in my notes “Well, thanks. I know he’s struggling but we haven’t even been reconnected for a week, and really only got to talk on Saturday, and he’s posting about how he doesn’t care if he’s alive. It seems strange to me that if he/they (my half-sister and him) say they want to get to know me, they sure have a funny way of showing it.”

I started pondering in my reflections during this time that my father and half-sister were two peas in a pod. They were both super opinionated and didn’t seem to have much of a filter. She’d said that it was “sad” that I’d waited so long to seek out the truth, but her initial response on facebook was exactly what I imagined as a potential outcome and that had given me pause all those years. She had literally asked “do I know you?” and “what’s going on” and it sounded full of suspicion like “who are you and what do you want” when she damn sure knew who I was, even without the required selfie as proof. She said she didn’t like texting, but got cagey when I tried to set up a phone call. 

She told me that our father didn’t use facebook messenger, but he told me that was his preferred way for me to reach him. 

He sent me a screenshot of his calendar that included my birthday, which by now he was clear on, after not knowing or remembering it in our first conversation. He had noted that he needed to pay a car bill, his wife’s doctor’s appointment, but no mention or reminder of my birthday. That was my first clue to not expect him to remember or do anything, but after 42 years of him not acknowledging it, a 43rd year of being ignored wasn’t going to bother me. 

I wrote that I had asked him about calling or emailing, that I’d given him my email address, phone number and that he was aloof (again) and I was trying to not get hurt (again). 

In my notes I picked apart the previous day’s texts with my half-sister and noted that she didn’t have a filter for what she said about my kid, and her critique of the selfie I sent at her request. 

I didn’t clock it at the time, but if you are having to keep notes about your interactions with someone, that’s a huge red flag. But I’m glad I kept the receipts or else I’d be questioning my recollection of events.

It wasn’t until the 27th that I noticed that my half-sister and father weren’t friends on facebook. 

No, I was not.

My father posted that he was “weeding out” his friend group because of some situation with someone who disagreed with him about how he was dealing with his wife’s health issues. He hinted that he’d spent the previous day arguing with them. He said we’d talk the next day. 

On March 1st, there was still no word from my father, but my half-sister texted me to thank me for giving her space. She said it was her that my father had gotten into an argument with and he had not only blocked her on facebook, but phone, email, and all social media. I didn’t want to get involved in their bickering, but I noted that it sounded like it happened pretty often because she wasn’t bothered by it. I’d escaped one toxic family and unwittingly walked into another dysfunctional family dynamic. 

With hindsight I can see that this was him showing me what he’d do if I disagreed or stepped out of line. One misstep would be all it took to be completely cut off. More on this later though. 

On March 3, 2023 I wrote that I had spoken to him every day, even if it was just a sentence or two of checking in. We chatted about gardening and plants and I knew already this wasn’t going to be a healthy relationship.