My relationship with my family has always been a strained one. It's most likely that it always will be too since some people will never change. I have so much internal conflict with several members of my immediate family and as much as I try to work on it I just can't let some things go.
To start off I have six parents, yes that's right six. Actually I would say I have four parents because my biological father doesn't deserve the title as a parent. Maybe just writing this blog will help me even more to deal with the pain I have.
Lets start with the sperm doner. My parents started very young and as we all know men mature slower then women so why would you expect a sixteen year old boy to be able to parent a child? Why not add to that and have another baby 10 months later. Sounds like a genius plan to me! Anyway, my biological parents got married when they were sixteen and had two kids by the time they were seventeen. As if that's not stressful enough try throwing in a very ill child into that mix. My brother was born with a bad heart just like my mother except for he couldn't survive his. He died when he was just two years old. I couldn't even imagine the pain that would cause parents let alone teenage parents. I was basically a replacement child. My mother didn't want my sister to be an only child so they had me when they were twenty. Their young marriage couldn't withstand babies so young and a death of a child and so they got divorced.
I know nothing of my biological father. He would come and take my sister for the weekend and leave me at home. He never paid child support and every time we would figure out where he worked he would get a new job. Way to be a deadbeat! I will never understand how a person can know they have children and not care about how they are or be considered about how they are being raised. It's as if he just provided the goods and went on his way. This of course had a direct effect on my mother. Randomly through the years my sister would be in touch with him and he'd want me to join them for dinner or for meeting up but I mostly refused. Why should I even give him the opportunity to know anything about me when he doesn't deserve it? My sister allowed him to be in her life but usually just when she needed something. Now that she has Ella he's apart of her life and I'm not a fan. He'll be at her birthday parties and we just ignore each other. I'm fine with this because I have nothing to say to him but I wish he could be the “adult” on the situation and perhaps say hi to me. The damage has been done and It's pretty deep.
At the age of two my adopted father came into my life. He officially adopted my sister and I on valentines day of 1985. I always considered my adopted father my dad. I call him dad and always will. He stepped in and took care of my mother, sister, and I. By no means was he perfect but he was always there for me. In 1990 my parents got in a huge fight with physical violence and we moved to Beaverton with my soon to be step dad. I was so sad to leave my dad. Even though I knew what he had done was not right I needed him in my life. I was never close to my mom and I was daddy's little girl so it was traumatic for me to be moving so far from my dad.
After we first moved up to Beaverton I saw my dad once in awhile and then it seemed to get less and less. I'm not exactly sure how it went down but my mom moved out when I was twelve and my dad moved in. It was just the two of us, which was a dream come true to me. He let me get away with far too much and I enjoyed it but looking back know it wasn't the way to raise a teenager at all. We lived together for two years and then my mom decided she wanted me to move back in with her. I was not a fan of this idea at all because we never had a good relationship. My opinion didn't matter though and my mother came and moved all my stuff over to her place while I was at school one day. She got the wrath for her actions though. After that I rarely saw my dad and he didn't even come to my graduation. I had worked so hard to get my diploma and I was looking for him during the whole ceremony and he wasn't there. I was devastated! He was the one person I thought I could actually rely on and he didn't even tell me he wouldn't be there. We didn't talk after that for three years. Now I know of his demands and I try to understand. He's apologized time and time again for the wrong he did and that takes a pretty big person. Now we talk and see each other much more often and I love it. He will always be my daddy.
My step father came into my life when I was nine and we moved to Beaverton. I was not his number one fan at all because I already had a dad and didn't need a replacement one. The poor guys was only twenty-two and here he was taking on a twenty-nine year old woman and her two daughters (12 & 9). I give him kudos for sticking it out. We are not easy women to deal with at all! He was as good to us as a twenty-two year old could be. When I was fifteen he slapped me for talking back to my mother and I slapped him back. If that doesn't tell you something about our relationship then I don't know what will. To this day I still feel bad for him. What kind of life could he of had if he wouldn't have gotten stuck with us? Neither he nor my adopted dad ever got to have their own children and I've always wondered how they feel about that. I know they consider us theirs but I also know that that's not the same.
Now to my sister. Oh my sister.... I have openly admitted to her that if we weren't sisters we would never have been friends or anything close to it. We are completely opposite people in the way we think and act. It's DeDe's world and we just live in and since she had my niece it's ten times as bad. The way she thinks drives e crazy, as if she's the only one that exists. I know we are all guilty of being selfish at times but she blows it out of the water. If she didn't have my niece we probably wouldn't even be talking. There have been several times in our lives where we gone without speaking and sadly it didn't really bother me.
My mother is a special person and deserves her own blog! What have I learned from my family? That family will mess up more then anyone else in your life. For some reason we feel like we can treat the people that “have” to love us horrible and expect them to still love us. I'm not a real believer in this because if you treat me like shit I'm not going to love you just because you're my family. I have also learned to just keep my mouth shut. My family will always have my back and I know at least that much is true.
*Step mom Kim, dad Carey, me, mom Barb, step dad Chris
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