I’ve mentioned before that I do not have contact with the people who are my biological family. I don’t really discuss the specifics and I won’t start now. I have a family, the family that adopted me, and for all their quirks I love them dearly.
I have a biological sister, 2 years younger than me. We’d not spoken for 8 years. Last year, after much searching on her part she found me. She contacted me on an incredibly ironic day, the day I started seeing a psychiatrist for my overwhelming depression. The timing was so….strange to me.
Following my normal course of action on things like this, I kept everything at arms length. I’m not one to just jump in and go for it, I wait, feel things out, see how they unfold. One week after she contacted me, Ghengis was killed.
To say that November was a tumultuous month would be an understatement.
After some rough moments, misunderstandings about intent or emotions, my sister and I have set forth rediscovering each other. It’s a strange process to say the least. People would think that if you have a blog you must want to share all aspects of your life, that you are an open book for all to read (or an attention who screaming for validation, i don’t know). There is much I do not write here, there is much that I do not talk about. There is a lot that I do not share with anyone.
This has been difficult, having someone pop in and know you. She knows me, she knows who I was, but in 8 years I’ve changed. I do not always have the words or motivation to describe how I’ve changed.
On the other hand, she has also changed. She went from a younger sister, a 20 something chica who could party and joke and be young. I always saw her as young. In 8 years she’s become a housewife and a mother. I have nephews. It’s taken some time to process that.
The similarities are interesting, she loves to cook almost as much as I do. We have a similar sense of humor. She is a housewife with kids and that used to be a goal for me. We also have differences. Differences in the way we interact with people or view certain things.
And so, for almost a year, i’ve had this triumvirate of events wrapped around me, my psychiatrist, my sister and my ghengis. Each stressful and each liberating in their own way. Through much effort, my sister and I have been able to find a balance. A certain level of solid ground from which we can feel comfortable. For me it was not easy to allow into my life a person connected to a group of people, my biological family, that I had deliberately cut off. For her I imagine it was not easy to find that the long lost older sister was not celebratory, but cautious and suspicious. It’s probably very hard to want to run to someone and embrace them only to find their arms out in front holding you back.
And so, after all these months I can say that I have another sister, her name is Brett. Now I can say that I have two sisters.