It's amusing to look back on things with hindsight being closer to 20/20. I can look back on my family life and I can draw lines from major events to scars that cover my heart. If you pinned each line I think you would end up with a tangled mess.
Here are just a few highlights. My mom was the only constant in my life growing up. She met my stepdad, got married and I was mentally adopted into the family. They were nice enough and I felt loved as a child most days. My mom had a best friend who had a daughter my age and we became like sisters just as our moms did. Their family adopted me into their family as one of theirs no Family was defined in my eyes as a child. Around the age of 11 my Nana and Papa died, they had lived with us for some time and the loss was tough on the entire house. Around the age of 12 my stepdad left. He was the only dad I ever knew, the one who carried me in the house when I fell asleep in the car, who cleaned my scraps, who taught me soccer and gave me piggy back rides. Suddenly he was gone. He didn't come around for a while, and when he did he would take my two sisters and leave me behind. It was hurtful and I didn't understand it at the time.
I learned that I had another father. My biological father, I would day dream about what a kind and wonderful man he would be, like a prince. I watched a lot of Disney growing up. I seemed to have forgotten the fact that he never came to see me, or if he did I was too young to remember. I wanted to met him, I want to find a way to fill the hole in my heart. I was difficult with my mother, she was increasingly volatile, and I ran away from home several times when she would taker her aggression out on me. I couldn't have known why, he wouldn't have told me she was sick, instead she decided to relent and sent me to met my biological dad (who I found out I had through a sister I found out about).
So off I went to a new place with new I was an outsider in a family that by rights I should have been a part of. I was 13 when this massive transition happened, and it caused no small amount of trouble for my teenage angst. I was confused, I was angry, I felt unloved, unwanted and lost. My mom sent me away with two hours to pack. No time to call anyone or write down phone numbers. No time to share with anyone what was happening. No, I just vanished and reappeared somewhere different, like a ghost.
I didn't really give my biological dad a chance, and he didn't really know how to be a dad anyway, my Stepdad was just gone, I wasn't going to hear from him, and at 15 my mom died. I felt like an orphan. My mom might have been out of her mind at times because of the cancer, but she was my constant, she was always there, and I knew she wanted the best for me. The family that had adopted me into theirs would be in and out of contact as I found and lost their phone numbers a number of times. I was even more confused, angry, unloved, unwanted, sad, and lost.
For years I thought of my stepdad as my dad and sought his approval, periodically I sought my biological dads approval, would someone, anyone approve of me. This need for validation was more unhealthy than I realized. I didn't fully process what was happening at the tender age of 15 and I don't believe I started to heal until I was in my 20's. The real healing the soul mending healing would happen in my 30's.
Shortly after turning 30 I decided to take a trip to visit the family that was so close to my mom and I. I did so with trepidation, with concern that although I kept them in my heart and mind as family they may not have done the same. It had been around 15 years. I flew in, and I met with the family, it was amazing, they didn't forget about me, even new members of the family were told about me. I wasn't an orphan all those years, someone loved me enough not to give up on me. They talked about me as if they always knew I would be there one day. It was the most loving and healing experience that I had had in the past 15 years and a stark contrast with the other families I had experienced.
Eventually my biological dad and I were able to work through our issues, and I no longer needed to seek approval because he was genuinely proud of all I had become and achieved in life. My step family would ebb and flow, with times I thought we were healing and times where I felt alienated and terrible. I did met my Grandpa, my stepdads father. He came into our lives trying to make amends for being gone so long. I can respect that, I respect someone that owns up to mistakes and has the courage to face those mistakes regardless of the potential backlash. He treated me like family, made sure I knew I was family and encouraged me not to write my step dad off, because were were family. Had it not been for Grandpa I am not sure how long I would have tried to be a part of that family. The funny thing is, it seemed he had more in common with me, he was more the black sheep just like I was. Some people didn't want to give him a chance, they didn't want to hear his side of things.
So it went on, this push and pull, until my Stepdad basically disowned me on social media because he disagreed with a decision I made regarding our family. I made the best decision I could at the time, I wouldn't change that decision and no amount of bully tactics were going to make me. I made a vow to look after some of our family members before anyone else, that became my job, and I will do what is best for them. Plenty of other professionals were involved in this decision but I became the easy target, the bad guy, because I would not do what everyone else seemed to expect me to do. What is ultimately inconsequential he showed me by not talking to me, by not talking to me and avoiding me, by his actions that I was less than he biological children, he showed me he didn't look at me equal with his other children, and sometimes I wonder if I were even equal with distant relatives. So I decided I had to let it go, I had to stop seeking his approval, who was he anyway that I should seek approval from him. He is just another flawed human like the rest of us.
I didn't know why I made terrible choices in the romance department, I didn't know on a conscious level that these things shaped me the way they did. I couldn't know why I constantly sought validation, I couldn't know why I sought love the way I did, or why I was so easily destroyed when people left. I didn't know why I would suddenly disappear from peoples lives and reappear months or years later. I couldn't know until I did the healing. I starting doing the healing in my late 20's much of the healing happened when I saw my adopted family in my 30's, and continued from that point on. It accelerated when I realized I didn't need a man in my life to be happy, when I took years by myself to love myself, and years teaching myself the only validation I need is my own.
With all this, I would like to say thank you to everyone who loves me for just being me, and to everyone out there remember the greatest thing you can do for yourself is to love yourself and the only person you need validation from is you.
