When you don't belong

Painting through difficult feelings

Art has helped me find my feelings this week. There has been a death, but I don't really belong to the grieving. I am grieving, but mostly for what could have been.

I didn't know that my Dad was not my biological dad until I was 39. My Dad had just died when I got an email saying ‘he wasn't your dad, I am’

It was a shock but it also made sense of a lot of things. It blew up my world but it also filled in some pieces. So many contradictions, so many different stories, and many half siblings.

He gave promises of a close-knit family eager for me to join and be part of. The truth unfolded that quite a few didn't want to meet me at all.

He gave promises of building a relationship in a way I could manage (with my chronic illness) he organised visits and cancelled last minute.

The last time I saw him he said ‘I thought I'd be enough for you’ then didn't respond to any of my texts or emails for several years. He then posted on my Facebook page knowing that people in my extended family still didn't know what had gone on, I asked him to take it down. I then suggested we go no contact as we pretty much were anyway, but maybe stay Facebook friends. He blocked me and sent me a hurtful email.

Half siblings are posting lovely tributes to him. He was a family man, he was very charming and bright and funny and magnetic. He was one of a kind and there was a lot special about him. But it didn't work for me. He didn't get me. And I didn't get the unspoken rules of his family. I had no way of knowing how it all worked, what anyone thought and how to break into it. Everyone seemed welcoming when I saw them but trying to build any relationship was like wading through treacle for me. It felt like they all had enough siblings and really didn't need another one.

I genuinely liked those I met and could see myself in them, I now know where my laugh comes from, and my smile. I come from different roots than I'd realised and it makes sense.

It has taken me a very long time to sort this all out in my brain, and speaking to a sibling this week to hear he had died has stirred things up again. I'm not well enough to go to the funeral even if I chose to, which knowing some people don't want me there wouldn't make me want to go anyway, but it's nice not to have to even think of the decision, my health has decided for me at the moment.

I had several of the bizarre meet ups like on the programme ‘long lost families’ where people meet and sit staring at each other, and say it's like you recognise them and feel comfortable. This did happen but not quite in the long term happy ever after way.

Perhaps if I hadn't been this ill, and had more energy, perhaps if there weren't the number of half siblings in double figures, and perhaps if he and I had been younger it may have worked better. Hard to tell. Maybe my Audhd didn't help with understanding how another family's dynamics work? It's hard enough in the family I grew up in!!

Now I need to let the dust settle again, concentrate on my health and my family and let my art guide me through the overthinking.