Family

To sum it up, my family situation is pretty fucked up.

Since I had a bunch of other ideas I was thinking about blogging that just didn't pan out, I'm gonna talk about one of the more interesting aspects of my life, and that is my weird family arrangement. I'm the only person I know who has over a dozen siblings, yet not a single one of them is full-blooded. So, here's how the story goes...

My mother, Evelyn was (as you might imagine) young and stupid like a lot of girls her age. I think she was in her early 20s at the most, maybe a little younger, when she got pregnant with me. She was living down southish for some reason, I think in Maryland (that's where I was born, anyways).

Just to preface my mother a little bit, she's got some issues. When she was just a baby, her mother (who, apparently, also had issues) neglected her. I don't know/remember the details, but when my mother was adopted she was malnourished and very unhealthy. She's always had medical problems, both physical and mental. She's seems like a hypochondriac half the time, but you never really can tell with her. The latest diagnosis is that she has Borderline Personality Disorder, which seems believable. She believes that no one loves her and other unpleasant emotional unhappiness. This had led her to do some fucked up stuff over the years, which I will not go into for my family's sake, but it has unfortunately led her to being pretty much hated by several of her siblings. More on this later. This story has layers, see.

So, she's in Maryland, dating this already married guy by the name of Ken. I forget his last name (sorry there, "dad"). (Just for the record, my mother is white, the man who got her pregnant was black.) He's gone and gotten two women pregnant, one of which he goes on to marry, the other of which is my mother. He encourages her to get rid of it (me), but she doesn't (lucky me). Eventually, she moves back home to northeastern New York, and eventually, she makes the correct choice and gives me up for adoption. I think I'm a couple years old at this point. Not really old enough to understand what's happening, but I do have a vague recollection of meeting the people who set up the adoption and whatnot.

The funny thing is that the people who adopt me are her adoptive parents . So my new parents are my grandparents (who I now refer to as mom and dad) who are not related to me at all. Anyways, so here I am, half-black kid with 5 adopted brothers and sisters, all in their 20s. Evelyn goes on to marry a complete ass-hole of a man and has three more kids with him. This guy is a real fucking nutjob, abusive to her and all the children. As such, three of my younger half-brothers are all irrevocably fucked up. One of them is mentally retarded, another they say will either end up in jail or dead before he's 30. As much as she regrets giving me up, there is really no doubt at all that she made the correct choice, and for that I'm very, very thankful.

So although I have a number of adopted and half-brothers and sisters, I'm essentially an only child. My parents are the age of grandparents (my mom is about 70 now). Still, I can't complain. My cousins/nephews (i.e. one of my adopted sister's children) become like my occasional brothers, and all is well and good. Things progess, nothing eventful occurs.

My mother eventually gets out of her abusive relationship, and goes on to have two more children, Adam and Sara. I'm a teenager, I think, when I finally meet them. It's an odd situation for me, even to this day. They are blood, and that's supposed to mean something. It does, I guess, but I see them probably once every two years. I want to be a "good brother," but I really don't know where to begin and it's as though everyone expects that I should. It's easy for people like my mom who just has an endless supply of love for pretty much everyone. For me, I don't know, it takes more than just blood. Not that I don't care or that I wouldn't do what I can to help them out, but it feels like it's more like because that is what I'm expected to do. They're practically strangers to me.

Evelyn continues to flip-flop about, she moves back here for awhile, then goes somewhere else, and then comes back again. She's caused my mom a lot of pain and stress, and part of me resents her for that. But I know that it's not wholly her fault. She's got her own problems, problems that I doubt she will ever work out. For lack of a better solution, we simply have to all get along as best we can, for better or for worse. I wish my adopted siblings would also understand this... but then again, they've all got their own issues as well.

Sometimes I wonder if all that drama when I was still just a child has had an adverse affect on me that I don't realize. Is that why I'm a shy person? Is that why it takes me longer than most to warm up to people? I'm too young to remember most of what went on back then, but I do wonder.

Now that I reflect on it though, its really not worth worrying about. Things really worked out as well for me as they could have. Hell, I'm really a damn lucky bastard. Lucky I was born, lucky I wasn't abused, lucky that my grandparents adopted me -- as they are really wonderful people. And here I am, being a waste of life when we all know I'm smarter than this.

Great. Now I'm depressed.