I grew up living with my sister, Ashley, and my mother, Ann. This is because my biological father (whose name I don’t really care to share) was is a real piece of work. He has a wrap sheet that’s pages upon pages in length, from stalking to battery and neglect. He has never outgrown being the self-indulgent child that he was before he ever met my mother. And all the other ruthless mothers and broken families he made. He created a handful of broken homes and left our families shattered, picking up his messy pieces and finding other families in the same situation due to him. For years. I have one sister that I was raised with, and many that I was not. Some, I did not even find until just a couple years ago. We bound ourselves together into a semblance of one really big, really fucked up family.
I remember the first times I met each of my siblings and their families. Siblings who I should have had an entire lifetime of knowing. It was extremely emotional. And awkward. But we grew to like and love each other, despite living miles and miles apart and being too young to really grasp what we were forced to deal with. So we grappled instead of grasped. We clung to what we knew, because it was all we knew.
Though it is confusing, conflicting, and unimaginably strange, my family is beautiful. It is the only blessing my father bestowed me. He made me, and then he left. My mom met a man named Jordan, who adored me, even though I was two, and not his. He spoke to my biological father and said, “Hey, you’re not here, and I am, let me have her” (I’m paraphrasing). So my father gave me up for adoption, and Jordan became my dad in all legal respects. He became my shiny, smiling new dad by loving me in a way that only a father can love a daughter. When I got older and my dad (Jordan) and mom had divorced, things got rocky. When I learned I was adopted, that Jordan was not my dad, I had an identity crisis between the ages of 8 and 9. I did not know who to call “dad” any longer. I didn’t know what family meant. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t look at the man I thought was my dad all along but wasn’t, and not know what I wish I hadn’t known. I played the cards dealt me, and I got over it with time. Things got back to normal between my mother, my dad Jordan, and my Sister and I. Now, I just also happen to have a long story about a sperm donor who made me, along with a lot of other younger sisters and a youngest brother. He gifted me with the relationships that I now have with them and aaaaaalllllllll the rest of the family that came with the package. It’s confusing, and any man that decides to marry me is going to have a helluva time trying to get the family tree straight, but that’s okay 🙂
I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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