Random Commentary

See, it's like this for me - when I was really little, before I even remember it in fact, my biologicals got deevorced and I got moved from one coast to the other to live out the chaos that turned out to be my life. Growing up, my dad was this guy who showed up on random occasions to say hi and drop off a gift or something. Don't read any negativity into that statement, because there is none - it was what it was, and I'm not complaining. My mom remarried, and this guy was an asshole. He didn't last long. My mom remarried again - by this time the whole notion of a father figure was pretty much ruined for me. This guy had a personality similar to mine, but his views were pretty much on the exact opposite end of the spectrum - there was no way we were going to get along, at least on any sort of friendly level. We managed to live though, and that's that.

Well, except for the whole instant family thing. Before this I was the baby of a set of three. Once stepdad part II came along suddenly I had a whole passel of new older brothers and sisters, several of them married, several with kids - I was an instant uncle, and the baby of a very large family. For the most part my new step brothers treated me like shit, yet were happy to let their kids' new uncle, being just a few years older than his new nephews and nieces, be a quasi-babysitter because that's who I got to play with. The thrill of this wore off after a while, because I'm certain I was being badmouthed to several of the nephews behind the scenes and they started being little assholes to me too. As a teenager, having these little shits insist that they could come into my room and be fuckers to me was annoying, doubly so when their parents couldn't understand why I didn't want to play with their rude asshole children.

This is one reason why the whole gay thing took me so long to get. I assumed that being gay was bad and wrong, because that's what everyone and everything was telling me, so constant sly (and not so sly) inferences from the stepbrother asshole parade automatically made me shun the notion. It was bad, having these adults give me shit about it was hurtful, so I would simply not be this bad and hurtful thing. I feel a little warped by it - I have all kinds of self esteem issues because I was the new worthless little baby that these adults had to put up with because their father decided he wanted to have a family beyond their mother. (I have no idea what was up with their family life before their dad married my mom, but from little clues I've gathered it apparently wasn't an exciting and happy Hallmark moment.) So after years of denial and constant questioning of my own motives and thoughts, I finally decided that isolating myself from everyone was the best way to deal with living. My friends from that time (most of whom are truly my family now) can attest that I was a conflicted, whining little shit who couldn't manage to figure out why being alive was so difficult.

It's around this time, right when I was finally starting to break through years worth of walls I'd built up around myself, that my dad decided he needed to come into my life and straighten me out. He'd done this very thing with my middle sister, bringing her to Texas and making her go through all those important steps into adulthood. Whether this worked for her and made her a happy and well balanced person is not my story to tell - I can assure you that it would not have done me any good. The only people who had any idea where I was in life were the people that had, for whatever reason, decided to be my close circle of friends and to stick by me and let me whine and complain and cry when I couldn't quite get past yet another self-imposed obstacle. I don't make friends easily (mainly because I do not trust human beings - big surprise), so being torn away from the few I'd managed to keep around would have been the worst thing for me. Explaining this to my dad would be a pointless venture, so I hid when he came to get me. He's only mentioned the incident once since, and he is of the opinion that my stepdad was being an asshole for letting me get away from him. I just keep my mouth shut. (I don't tell my dad anything, I just sit there and nod. It saves me a lot of headaches.)

So now here I am, in this weird floating state of being. I just don't really feel all that tied to other people, partly because of that wordy mess of bitching above, and partly because I live in my own head and am tremendously self involved. It isn't that I hate my family or that I want to avoid them, because I don't. It annoys my dad that my sisters and I aren't constantly touching base and making sure we have an encyclopedic knowledge of the whole family's doings. He doesn't get that we're not wired that way. These people to whom I am related, through blood or through certificates of legally recognized relationship, are just more people in the world - these arbitrary connections are just conversation points to me. I haven't had a lot of contact with the step-siblings in years. I got along well with most of the new step-sisters, and am happy to spend time in their company if the circumstances arise. (One was a total bitch to me and she had better not try and nice me up ever in the future. Her husband can fuck himself with a red hot poker too.) The step brothers, I remain civil with them if we ever cross paths, but I'm not going to pretend to be friendly. They probably have no idea that they wrenched me so out of true when I was just a kid, and if I were stupid enough to bring it up they'd just call me a whining pussy anyway. They can fuck themselves. I haven't seen hide nor hair of any nephew or niece from them since I was a teenager, and honestly I don't plan to go out of my way to. Nothing personal - I don't begrudge any of these people much (exceptions are noted, of course), I'm just not all that involved. I don't think they give much of a shit about me either.

I'll be packing this week for my annual trip out to California. I make sure to trip out to the house where I grew up and visit there, but I stay with friends. It's just easier that way. I have a couple cute purses in my carry on, with candy and stuffed bunnies and other fun easter things to give to my nieces. I try to be good to them, I try to be patient and interesting. I put more effort (which is still admittedly not a great deal) into my relationship with these two girls than I ever really have with any of the people I've been so accidentally connected to. I see small fragments of myself as a child in them, and it's scary. Sometimes, in fact, I see the other adults in their lives doing things that bothered or hurt me when I was little - I get the urge to say something about it sometimes, but I know it's pointless. I don't have kids (and never ever will, you can bet on that - kids, like dogs, are great when they're someone else's) so I'm not allowed to have any sort of opinion on how they're treated or raised or regarded. But seeing these things with my own eyes, happening to someone else in the same situation I was in, shows me that I wasn't so wrong to be unhappy about it when it was happening to me. I just hope they deal with it better than I did.