Nearly 8 years ago, my mother and stepfather got divorced. [Insert chorus of HALLELUJAHS! here] Lots of wonderful things resulted from this, along with something terrible. As soon as the divorce was final, my stepbrother's mother decided that he was no longer to have any contact with his "other family". She wouldn't let him talk when we called, and when we kept calling, she changed their phone number. My brother, the one who is the same age as me, with whom I bathed and slept and played and grew and loved during all the earliest years of my life, was suddenly gone forevermore.
I've missed him to varying degrees throughout the rest of my life, more and more since Greg reminded me what family is supposed to feel like. I don't really give a shit that we're not technically related anymore; that is my brother and I won't really tolerate anyone saying anything different. When he turned 18, my mom and I really started trying to get back in touch with him, because his mom couldn't stop us anymore. First we called his father, but [don't get me started on] that man hadn't spoken to his firstborn son in years and was disturbingly disinterested in our desire for reconnection. Fuck him. So then I started periodically searching Facebook in an attempt to find him, but he has both and very common first name and a very common last name, and I didn't know where he lived or where he was going to school or anything that could help me narrow the search. I have two friends at school who live in the area he lived in when were growing up, and I asked them if they knew someone by his name, and one of them did! But it wasn't him.
To make a long story short, we were very discouraged. Short of hiring a private detective, there seemed to be no way to put our little family back together, and that fact was generally a small piece of sadness inside me all the time. (I am so sick and tired of people ruining MY family with THEIR issues. You no longer wanting to call someone "boyfriend," "husband," or even "son," does NOT automatically entail that I no longer want to call him "mine" in some form. There are some bonds I can never imagine breaking, no matter how hard they are strained.)
I can't really even express in words, then, how I felt when I checked my phone after watching a movie and saw that I'd missed a bunch of texts, two of which were as follows: One from my little sister saying B**** had friended her on Facebook, and one from Facebook saying those impossible little words: B**** J****** has requested to add you as a friend on Facebook. I was just talking the other day about how fragile life is, how it can just turn upside down and inside out in the blink of an eye. Sometimes upside down is a wonderful wonderful way to be. Life has this funny way of scaring and blessing you at the same time. My dad is so sick, just laying in bed because sitting down hurts, waiting for a call that he can come back to the hospital, and I am so worried about him. But my long-lost brother just walked back into my life and has missed me as much as I have missed him. He wants to see me as soon as possible and I just want to hold him for hours. I just want to look at him so I remember his face again. I have his number and I can't wait to hear his voice.
Confession: Everything I ever say about family and how mine isn't that big a deal to me is total and complete BULLSHIT. I think I just tell myself that to avoid remembering how much it hurts to have lost such important parts of it. But I don't have a word for how deliriously ecstatic Facebook-chatting with my brother the night before last made me feel, or for how terrified I am about my dad's health right now. My friends are my family, but my family is my family too, and my heart is feeling so much at one time right now. Daddy, I love you. BJ, I love you too. There are some bonds that can never be broken.
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