Growing up adopted, I always knew I had an older brother that my birth mom kept. Unfortunately, by the time I felt mentally and emotionally ready to go out there looking for my birth family, it had already been years since that brother had taken his own life. I never had the opportunity to meet the only (*blood*) sibling I'd known I'd had for all those years, but I had a new opportunity with a younger sister and 2 younger brothers who were born after me and I was so excited! I remember meeting my younger brothers for the first time and it felt so natural! Sure, we don't necessarily know each other all that well, but it still felt like family!
My sister was pregnant around the time I found them. When the baby was born, she cut off contact with me completely with no explanation. A couple of years later, I was told it was due to severe post-partum psychosis and that I guess it was really bad for a while there. Eventually, she invited me back into her life and we made plans to meet for the first time not long after I moved back to Wisconsin from Texas. I thought it went amazing and had an awesome time and it was just like finally having the sister I always wanted! I remember there were many times during our visit she was concerned about her older son and told me repeatedly that he often tried to hurt or kill the baby. She was very stressed about the situation, but hopeful that it was a jealousy phase that would pass. It did.
Flash forward, nearly a decade later, and despite numerous attempts, none of my siblings give enough of a rat's ass about me to ever bother reaching out to me. I'm always the one who has to reach out, I'm always the one who has to try and make plans to meet up, and I'm always the one rejected time and again as though nothing in this world is less important than me.
My sister recently posted on her Facebook something about our brother, and I made a comment to share my grieving. I wasn't trying to share my story to take away from hers, but rather as a demonstration of my empathy in an experience that, as siblings, we share.
Well, apparently I'm not allowed to mourn my brother I never got to meet that she has all these memories with, because she unfriended me over it.
When I went to talk to her about it, she got incredibly hateful and accused me of being mean to one of my nephews that one time she allowed me to visit, that one time when she was probably still going through post-partum psychosis and therefore still delusional, and also when she was under a lot of stress because her older son constantly tried to hurt the new baby out of jealousy.
But I'm cruel for pointing out to her that her memory must be false because of those circumstances and that the idea of me being mean to either one of my nephews is completely ridiculous.
Maybe I didn't word it all that tactfully, but she'd just unfriended me for sharing in mourning the loss of our brother decades earlier so I think I deserve a little bit of a break there. What kind of person unfriends family for mourning family and then drags up false memories to throw in their face when they're called out for it??
Her one act led to me unfriending literally every family member I had on Facebook, both adoptive and biological, because if that's how family can behave on social media then maybe I need to leave my family off of mine for my own protection.
And yet, I'm just so broken. I want my family. All of them. But not just on social media, I want them in my life! Why am I not good enough for them?
