My father may not have loved his kids. I should do my best to love my siblings, even the ones I haven't met yet.
Today I am thankful for my past.
I don't write about this much but I have nine half-siblings. I may be confused, it may be seven. I could be adding my step-brother into the mix.
It may be seven. I have six-half siblings who were birthed by my father's first wife. There was one that found me when she got her adoption paperwork as an adult. I have my sister.
I have an older step-brother who was a back up singer for a well known pop star until he discovered cocaine. He had a record album produced in 1983. It never hit the market. He wanted to go by the stage name Ronnie Lee. I have no idea who has the album that graced our living room growing up. I lost contact with him after his father (my step-dad) committed suicide.
6 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 9
I have nine siblings that I know about.
I don't know my half-siblings very well. I haven't spoken to many of them.
My father was a bit of a philanderer.
I didn't care much for him.
I remember him beating me one day while I was wearing purple. I was five. The pants were corduroy. The shirt had vertical stripes.
I hate purple. I hate corduroy. I hate vertical stripes.
I remember his guitar.
It was an acoustic.
I remember his fishing pole and how he would kick the table after mom prepared the fish he caught to try to convince me that the fish were still alive.
He was a jerk.
I remember hating him to the point that I was grateful that he was gone.
His sister sought me out in 1996 and told me that my father was dead.
We had the internet back then. I knew better. I had a Google alert set. One day about fifteen years ago, I received a Google alert that my father had died in Texas.
No big deal.
I also knew better because my father lied about his name on my birth certificate. In my teens, I wrote to the man whose name was on my birth certificate.
He turned out to be my paternal grandfather. My father's father was a farmer in Los Angeles. He must have made a fortune when he sold his family's land.
He wrote beautiful letters back to me telling me that he wished he were my dad because he'd be very proud of me.
I still have the letters.
When he died, his eldest son tracked me down to tell me. It was 1989. That was three years before I changed my name and hid from the world.
I think he was worried that I wanted a piece of my grandfather's estate. No, I didn't.
It be more fair to say that I wanted to understand where I came from.
My uncle also expressed his disdain for his brother, my father. I clung to their life stories and felt encouraged to continue in school because my uncles and aunts made something of themselves.
One of my uncles is a doctor, another is supposedly a lawyer. The eldest son wrote a book about genealogy.
It's strange that my father's sister didn't share that with me. She told me that my father's siblings lived in Kansas and were farmers.
I learned differently. .
One of my uncles is a world renowned plastic surgeon. I remember reading his journal articles with a mixture of glee and wonder in the mid-eighties. I couldn't understand them.
Yes, I've been published three times in journals. I'm sure it was because of his inspiration.
I think my father's family inspired me on some level to push myself to try to be something.
It was in my blood.
I will be forever grateful.
My father was an actor who ran off to Hollywood. I would learn from his brother that he ran off during the harvest which caused a lot of hardship for the family.
My father never made it big.
He spent his life living in regret.
He was an abusive jerk.
I'm lucky he was out of my life.
There is one thing that I absolutely cannot respect about the man.
He didn't understand gun safety. I have a memory of him in a drunken stupor threatening my maternal grandfather with a firearm.
Grandpa just grabbed the gun, unloaded it and told my dad to get off the property.
I was six.
I never saw my father again.
It's funny. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like my grandfather. I wanted to be a person of few words. When I spoke, I wanted to make it count.
Well....I talk too much for that.
I grabbed a gun from a drunk at the age of ten. I don't remember trying to unload it before taking it to the fire department.
I thought that's what you were supposed to do when an idiot points a weapon at you.
Take it!
The cops chewed me out for that one. I'm not sure that my sister or I would be alive if I hadn't snatched that gun away from my step-father.
Children learn what they live!
*****
Over the years, I found I went to high school with a half-sibling. She refused to talk to me.
That's okay.
I assumed that she was angry. Our father left their mother for my mom. Judging by the lie on my birth certificate, I'm going to guess that his marriage to my mother wasn't legal.
He had the audacity to force my mom to babysit my half-siblings
I actually have memories of playing with my half-sisters when I was very young. They stayed for weeks on end with my grandmother, mother and I.
Our dad wasn't around.
Our dad was a deadbeat.
I am absolutely sure they were traumatized by his behavior.
I learned tonight that they've been looking for me all these years but I've been in hiding.
I changed the spelling of my first name.
I changed my middle and last name.
I have basically hid in plain sight.
So, they reached out to my baby sister.
My baby sister wasn't kind.
Oh my.....she had it the worst of all of us. She was in state run foster care. For some damn reason Colorado human services shipped her off to Florida when she was fourteen. The Florida foster mom thought she could get more money if she had kids living with her that were pregnant. She forced boys to have sex with my fourteen year old sister.
I lost my cool. That tapped into anger I didn't think I was capable of. One can be so angry that fear, self-consciousness and shyness go straight out the window.
I didn't know I could talk so loud.
That was when I became a political activist. I was barely eighteen.
I tried to adopt my sister out of foster care. I even got married to do just that.
The Denver Department of Social Services awarded custody of my sister to a pimp. I understand my sister won a massive settlement over that which put her through graduate school.
I don't trust the government farther than I can spit. I have damn good reason for that. If you ask me what I think about Trump's kiddo detention centers, I'll tell you what a shitty parent the government makes.
It shouldn't have taken over a year to get my sister out of that sexually exploitive home.
This is probably why I'm a libertarian.
The government is too big. It loses sight of the people in its charge.
Foxes watch the hen house, so to speak.
Too many government employees lack oversight.
Apparently, my sister let our half-siblings know that her life was horrible. She expressed hurt and shock that they didn't care.
She put them in tears.
I don't think she understands that they were hurting, too.
They were children. What could my sister have expected them to do?
Deadbeat dads ruin families. Colorado, at least in my experience, supports deadbeat dads. Society cannot manage if one gender is responsible for all of the financial and emotional responsibility to bringing up the next generation.
It's our parents' fault our lives were shitty.
So....blaming our siblings isn't the right answer there.
It's not their fault.
It truly isn't.
One of our half-sisters is dying. She's just a few months older than I am.
I'll call her tomorrow.
I had no idea they reached out to a local news station in an effort to track me down. Um.....they don't know my name.
I've actually been featured on that station in the past but not with my birth name.
Wow... this might get interesting.
******
My sister has a confidant who is the mother of one of our D.C. lawmakers. Since we only have two people holding these seats in our state, I can't say what the office is or you'd guess the person's name.
I can say that I've built numerous websites for the lawmaker's opponents over the years.
That woman is a staunch Democrat as is the legislator. My sister is also a Democrat.
My sister always knows what to say to piss me off and make me want to start another Political Action Committee.
The last time I spoke to my sister, the lawmaker's mother allegedly told my sister that I am "certainly good at advocating for myself."
That's a slam towards my libertarian stance.
They claim that people like me are greedy and don't care about other people. The claim is that should libertarians have their way, we'd all live in a post-apocalyptic world of ruin.
Yeah....I'm Mad Maxine - lol.
Sure.....Whatever.
Today....the insult was even worse.
Apparently, this lawmaker's mother informed my sister to ignore my "tough girl act." Deep down inside, she claims, I'm hurting over my childhood.
I can't say that I am hurting over my childhood.
I had a lot of wonderful advocates.
I don't know of any other way to feel.
I was lucky.
I had Baptist ministers and Mormon bishops who helped me find families to stay with in times of need. They came to the house to make sure my sister and I were fed. They brought clothing.
They taught me to tithe, even if my only tithing is to the local food bank. If we all give what we can, we can make a difference in the lives of others.
My childhood taught me NOT to trust the government- trust private charity instead.
In my case, I can pay it forward.
I had talent scouts, teachers and many other prominent figures in my life who helped me find out who I was. They taught me to allow my gifts to flourish even in the face of adversity.
Adversity makes artistic works deeper.
My sister didn't have that influence.
Politicians helped me.....sometimes.
When they didn't and I knew I was right,
I bitched like a heathen out of hell until things changed.
Some things are left undone.
I'll always be busy because there will always be more hellish fires to put out.
No....I am not hurting from my childhood.
It shaped me into the barking hellhound I am today.
I had great friends, for the most part. Many of my childhood friends are still in my life.
I've pissed off a couple of the liberal ones with my rants against silly taxes and Red Flag laws.
Yeah...it's the staunch liberals that tend to stay away.
That's okay.
Yes, I'm hurting from stupid crap I did as a teenager (it's more regret for not telling someone how important he was). If he's happy, it's all good.
I'm not sure if I could be happy with someone who dislikes the Constitution or TABOR.
Things always work out they way they need to work out, don't they?
Sigh....
Yes, I'm running from a stalker because I never learned discernment and allowed an asshole to take over my life. That lesson is just to not be so patient. I turned my cheek far too many times and this guy got away with stealing so many things from me. Yeah....this guy got to hurt me because I allowed him to boil me in hot water. It was many changes done in an incremental fashion, I didn't realize where I was until it was too late.
Now, I'm not so patient.
What is life but a series of lessons?
I don't understand what this woman is trying to say about me.
Or maybe my sister was projecting her grief on to me.
I don't know.
One things is for certain, I do not grieve for my childhood.....not one single bit.
After working with people who appear to come from happy families where the abuse was hidden, I realize how lucky I am.
I knew the shit in my life wasn't right.
Most abused children think it to be normal.
*****
I am tough.....as is my sister.
Denying me my strength is an insult.
I would never change the script of my childhood - not one single line.
Those adversities made me the person I am today.
Those kindnesses I benefited from have taught me empathy and charity.
I honestly think my childhood was pretty damn good.
Nothing can be truly bad if you learn from it.
Love ya,
S.
Edit: I don't accept Facebook friend requests anymore. My sisters are reaching out and trying to friend me that infernal website.
I saw their pictures and had to laugh.....
We all have the same curly red hair!
Maybe this won't be so bad after all.