My Extended Family

At this point, I feel like I need to get back on the subject of my extended family.  I have yet to discuss this with most of them.  Some of them may even find this blog and that’s how they’ll hear about it.  If that’s the case, I’m sorry, in a more perfect world we’d all get to sit down and talk it through.  Unfortunately this is not a perfect world and I can’t sit down with all 50 of you and talk about this.  It’s not exactly Thanksgiving Table conversation.

As a heads up, for all intensive purposes, if I say “my family” in this blog posting, I mean my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins). Growing up, we never talked about adoption in my family. It was never really brought up. It was something I would talk about with my parents, but nobody else.

Well, there was one exception. My paternal grandmother always sends me a card on January 7^th, my special day, the day I was brought home. She calls me every year and tells me how glad she is that I came into their lives and how grateful she is that I’m a part of her family. It’s really sweet and I love my grandmother for it. At the same time, that’s the only person in my family who ever even acknowledges that day other than my parents.  And the ONLY person in my family who remembered this year other than me.

When I was about eleven or so I remember being at my aunt and uncle’s house and it was a huge family gathering. I have a bunch of cousins who are my sister’s age and they all hang out at these family functions. They were all sitting on the stairs and talking and they didn’t see me come up to them to ask if I could hang out too. They were talking about me and my cousins asked my sister why I looked so different from everyone in our family. My sister told them that it was because we were both adopted so we weren’t biologically related. They asked her a bunch of other questions but most of them were about how I looked different from everyone else. It was like they totally missed that she was adopted too because she looked like she fit in our family.

It’s not only looks that separate me from everyone else. I have a different kind of intelligence. I’m good with computers and math and all that stuff. My family is good at reading people and taking care of things. They are teachers and nurses. They can make anyone feel better and have the social thing down. What’s worse is that I intimidate them because they don’t always understand me. I can’t really talk about school because I get weird looks if I do. They don’t always get that I’m excited about what I do as a software engineer and that I want to share that with them, and that I’m not trying to show them how “smart” I am.

When I found NeverTooLate back in February, I didn’t tell anyone because everything was so new and I wasn’t sure what was really going on. I was still trying to make sense of things, and I felt like I couldn’t explain it in the right words. I was afraid that if I told my family, they would judge me and feel like I felt they weren’t good enough. I didn’t want to hurt anybody so I didn’t tell them. After things went downhill with NeverTooLate, I figured they wouldn’t want to hear about it anyway.

But now that I’m talking to SinginInTheRain on the phone, I feel like there is a strong possibility that these people may someday be in my life. If that happens, then it could affect my family. At this point, I’m tired of keeping secrets. I hate secrets, probably because I don’t like that I’m someone’s “dirty little secret”.

The more time I spent reflecting, the more I realized that your family is supposed to be there to support you. If they don’t understand, it means they aren’t listening to me or they didn’t give me a chance to explain. My family should trust me and they should realize that I’m doing what I have to do for me. If they love me the way they say they do, they will be supportive and it won’t be a big deal. It’s only as big of deal as I make it.  If they are supportive, then I’ll have people back in my corner. Because lately I don’t feel like I have too many people in my corner and I need people there who love and support me. I need more than a boyfriend and a few girlfriends. I need my people, my family.

I finally told a few cousins and an aunt I am particularly close with.  Guess what?  My mom blabbed a few months ago after I asked her not to!  I have yet to confront her about it because I don’t know what she’s going to say or what I want to hear.  I don’t know who knows and what they know, I just know that some of them know some things.  Got to love family secrets!