So. I got some rather shocking news recently, and have decided to share it with everyone because I’m sick of repeating the story ad nauseam. About 2 weeks ago, I had just gotten home from a shoot when I heard a knock on my door. Generally I don’t answer the door unless I’m expecting someone, because I live in Crackton and don’t want to get shot. And also because it’s usually someone trying to sell me crap or trying to serve me with papers of a legal nature. Anyway. Something made me open the door to see a UPS guy with a registered envelope. Inside is a letter from a woman who says she’s my sister!
Apparently, my father knocked a girl up in college and then bolted before she had the baby! While he was engaged to another woman! Those of you who knew my father probably won’t be surprised, but I sure as shit was. There was a time when my father and I were very close, and it shocked me to my bones to learn that he could keep this kind of secret. Moving on. The baby was put up for adoption, and when she was all grown up, decided to find her birth parents. Her birth mother was reluctant to tell her who her father was, but eventually gave in and gave her my dad’s name.
For brevity’s sake, let’s just say he was not enthused about it and basically told her to fuck off. So she does some more research and finds me. She prints a picture off my page and stares at it for a year before deciding to send me a letter and some photographs. Now my first thought was that this was some scam, or that she had the wrong guy. But then I saw how much she looked like my grandmother, and how much her baby pictures looked like mine. And how everything in her adoption file matched my father, and all the eerie coincidences that came up when I called her after reading her letter. So we talked. And talked. And talked. And emailed. And talked some more.
We talked about doing a sibling DNA test, about me coming to her to meet her and her daughters. That’s right, I have neices, too.As it stands now, we’re trying to get to know one another and catch up on each other’s lives. I really feel that my father robbed me of something by not allowing us to know each other, and I’m angry about that. But I’m also totally thrilled to have a new sister, thrilled to have someone who looks like me and wants to know me and isn’t bitter or cynical like me. Part of me is jealous that she got lucky enough to be adopted by a nice, normal family and didn’t have to go through what I went through. But then again, she had her own hell. So now, I’m sort of trying to recreate my life for her.
I sent her pictures of me as a baby and as a pre-teen, but I’m sorely lacking in photos from the high school years. (That was back when I thought I was too skinny and ran from all cameras.) That is all.