Bad A*s Poets Talking S**t Forum It's All Relative

After I read her first today, Jamee got me thinking....we are such a diverse and open, brutal, honest group....how many of us had relatives that came up from out of no where or found things out about their family recently that shocked you? By no means can I even begin to TOUCH Jamee's story, but perhaps getting it off our chests will help us deal? Can I start? Pull up a chair people....it's long, but hell, it's friday and i don't feel like working....

(if you have read my myspace profile - this may help better explain...my grandfathers comment too)

When I was a junior in high school we did a project on geneology. My mom was not around a lot growing up b/c of her work, and my dad worked weird shifts, so I was left alone a lot. The project required us to find photos of older family members. I started digging through a box my mom had hidden in her closet a box marked "keepsakes" - I found a photo of a man standing next to her in an army uniform in front of an airplane. When my mom returned from whatever trip she was on at the time...I asked her who it was, as I didn't recognize him. I nearly fainted when I heard her say, "That's my real dad". My whole life I had thought my grandfather I grew up with was biological, only to find out different...I never really liked him, and now I felt a sense of relief I wasn't related to him. Suddenly the puzzle was solved as to why my mom's siblings didn't look anything like her, and why no one would ever tell me stories about the older generations. I hated my mom for a long time for that, and my grandmother. In a matter of minutes, I had found out my grandfather was a WWII pilot and died during the war. Something I should've been proud of, was kept secret. It was kept secret b/c my grandmother I then learned had been kicked out at 13, pregnant at 15 with my mom, married, widowed and remarried at 19. What might seem like no big deal, in the 40's/50's was a big indiscretion, especially being in backwoods OK. Within the next few days, I learned a whole new set of relatives existed. I learned my great grandmother was Indian and the rest of my family was Irish, and somehow I was related to the Merrill Lynch fame...I also learned my great-grandfather was in WWI - and a few months later I inherited his WWI medal. Boy was I pissed off.

Then, why this was kept from me, I'll never understand...in the same week, I found out more about my father & my biological paternal grandfather. I had learned my dad was married before my mom and had been abused by his wife, thus resulting in divorce, and that my dad's family all thought my mom cheated on my dad b/c from his abuse he wasn't suppose to have children, so for many years I was "frowned" upon, until it became obvious I was his blood. Then I learned that my dad had a father, which I knew obviously, but he was never in the picture....and that my dad's dad was very close to him, I had a whole nother side of Irish family, and my dad went from having 5 sisters to 8, plus 2 brothers that died as infants, and 3 more stepsiblings...and he was this "great man" - that i new nothing about....that i had this entire family that spanned from Hawaii to Virgina, that my dad had been drafted and served during the Vietnam war, and my dad was named after his father....again, pissed off.

In the last couple of years I have had a cousin suddenly show up out of no where that was a hidden indiscretion from my Mormon uncle. I found out that cancer runs in both sides of my family, terminal and not so much, and I found out that my OCD with Louisiana isn't just coincidence, that I actually have some french/creole/voodoo hindering kinship.

It's no wonder I'm as fucked up as I am. Who the f**k am I really? I'm still trying to figure it out.

So...now that i've got that off my chest....tell me yours.....I know there are more out there and worse than mine.

*On a side note....some of you have asked about my daughter's name, it is a generation thing, it was passed down from my dad's dad, to him, to her. If you want to know why she has 3 names...i'll have to explain later.

I always feel guilty about telling things to the public about my passed. It seems to me, just me personally, that it's selfish for me to talk about it, like I'm complaining or something. I guess it's because that's the way I was raised.

Anyways, here it goes -

I was born deaf. My parents didn't know that until my sister was two (she's 15 months younger than me) and was already talking and walking. After several surgeries, I finally got some hearing. I didn't start talking 'til I was four years old. So a lot of my childhood life is about observing instead of interacting, you can say. My first language was sign language but the teachers noticed I watched people talk and was able to learn cues. So the SL quit and the speechreading started. I now mainly read lips and know cues inside and out. If you want to know what cues are, just email me and I'll explain.

I had a pretty good childhood until I was six years old. Then my world fell apart and has been chaotic since.

I'll have to write more later. Right now it's time for me to go get my daughter from school.

There are lots of skeletons in my family's closet. I'll tell one for now. My mother, who died when I was 17, had always been a cheater. As far as I'm aware, she never was in a serious relationship where she didn't cheat. Up until I was 9 years old my sister and I lived in a house with my mom and dad fighting constantly. To say that they were both self centered would be an understatement. As a result my sister was my keeper, she's 3 and half years older than me. Well, when I was 9 my mom divorced my dad mainly because she was ready to move on with another guy. That worked out okay until I was 16. She found her high school sweetheart online (he lived in Kansas and she was here in WV) and they started talking about being together. My mom told us she had planned a "sabatical" for a week in April. That meant she was going to be totally gone and we couldn't call her. She needed "time for herself". Anyway, that week my little brother was concieved. My mom hid the pregnancy for as long as she could. My stepdad had a vascetamy (spelling?) in the early nineties so my brother was def not his. There are two things that bother me about this: 1) Will I turn out like my mom? Spend my entire life running from one man to another trying to feel complete until I die because of the stress of it all? and 2) There has always been a little thought in the back of my brain that I am not my dad's kid. We look nothing a like. My sister and I look like cousins. And I found out after my mom's death that my dad suspects it too because some time around when I was conceived my parents were seperated. My mom always stressed to me that I was a couple weeks late. Looking back, if I was on time then I am not my dad's because my mom was in D.C. for almost the entire month of May and all of June.

Anyway, it's funny what people sweep under rugs. I'd much rather know who my real dad is then keep this charade going. Who do people think they are protecting? Most of the time it's dead people. I don't understand.

This is one post I feel very at home with :) My family is like a soap opera that people stay tuned to every day to find out the next big catastrophy that is around the corner. My mother met my father in high school. My mother had her group of friends, and my father was the outcast. They had been dating for awhile when my mother got pregnant. She was only 17, and my father and her mother forced her into having an abortion. They took turns staying at her side, even through the night as she slept to make sure that she went through with it. She was absolutely devastated, and planned to have me. She thought having a baby would take away her pain. So she kept me a secret until she was almost eight months pregnant - everyone knows how difficult a task that must have been. Anyways, long story short - I was born, she was only 19. My father, who comes from a family where bi-polar runs rampant, was very very abusive. He threw her across rooms, down stairs and occasionally left welts bigger then eggs on her head. She married him anyways. Forced into it, so that I wouldn't be a "b*****d" child. After one-to-many a*s kickings my mother finally got the courage up to leave him. My step-dad (another high school friend) was there for her. He took both of us in, took care of us and ended up becoming my second dad. They had my brother when I was four. In the meantime. . . my dad kept threatening my mother that he would kill her if she ever took me away from him, and learning of the information, my grandparents gave us the money to leave the province. My grandfather, then hired an old friend/associate of my mother to apply for a job at my other grandfathers company. Once she was hired, she pressed charges against him for workplace sexual harrassment/assault. The cops came and took my grandfather away in cuffs. After tens of thousands of dollars on private investigators, they realized what my first grandfather had done. For some reason the fraud charges got thrown out. Also, at that time my father - still not knowing where I was - had my sister with his then-girlfriend, and ended up hiring the same private investigators to find where my mother had taken me. He ended up getting her thrown in jail for abduction. Those charges were dropped and for awhile life just floated along. Then my mother ended up going through a really bad bout of depression, and left my step-dad tearing up my little brother's world - I was only 16 and pregnant with my first son, living on my own. So I wasn't as effected. To wrap this up real quick - my mom is living with some guy that I really disapprove of, my brother has just gone through a whirlwind drug addiction that lasted for over five years and we're praying he's finally through it, my real dad had one more kid - my brother who is eight months younger then my son (his nephew), all three of my siblings have entirely different parents and somewhere in the mix I learned of a cousin that there is no record of because of a very very illegal adoption, a biological grandfather that I only met just recently that looks far far too much like me it's scary, and if I counted the grandparents I have I'd need two extra hands. . .

I don't have any hard feelings, and I suppose my story isn't as heartwrenching as the rest, it's just very expanded from the norm - I always figured it was such a nice thing to have so many people that loved me (ya I know that's corny but hey - that's me, a little cute and ALOT sappy)

*cheers everyone*
Christina

Somehow, I missed this thread.

This might just sound like one long rant....
(copied and pasted...to save repeating myself)

I have 3 grandmothers (my mom was adopted by family) and well I was raised to acknowledge all my grandmothers, even the b***h but somehow everyone forgot to tell me and my lil bro that my real grandfather was alive right under our noses. Growing up everyone had grandfathers, it seemed but us, when no one had fathers (and I was the odd ball who did). One day when we was like teenagers, we found out he was this uncle we saw a lot, but no one told us he wasn't really our uncle...we loved him but that detail would have made a world of difference. Not too much later, he fell and broke his neck and then he died and me and my lil bro felt very cheated and out of place around people who knew lifetimes before we came into this world and no one bother to tell us a thing. Later, I found we was youngest out of 15 grandkids and the only ones who came to visit him that I know of. I had a whole branch of family (my mother's siblings) that I had never seen or heard of, and since he died, never heard of again.

My mother has an odd kind of family, at least to me, since I have only one half brother (I don't know who the f**k he is, but I think that's his fault) and the rest of my sibs are by my parents, even though I think none of us look alike to say the least. Her real mother put her up for adoption, I don't know why other than she was a child from another father than the kids before. My grandmother (egg donor) had two more kids by the same man, but she kept those kids... I'm not bitter about the fact she gave up my mother, and I hope my mother is not bitter about it because she was rasied in a better home in better places. In the 70's, 80's, and part of the 90's quite a few of her brothers by that mother were all fucked up with drugs or something. She's been in contact with them since she was 10 or something. I don't think she was ever really one of them, and as a child I sensed my Grandmother didn't care too much about us, we was the odd grandchilren out.

When I was like... 6 or 7...I was always very sick...since I had turned 5 and I seemed to only get sicker during those years. My mother would call everyone, a collection of prayers. She called my grandmother and the woman just shruged my life off as just maybe lost cause. She told my mother she could always have another daughter because the world wasn't over (in fact she couldn't have anymore kids) if I died. Sure, the world wouldn't have ended but who tells a mother that s**t when their child is sick in the hospital. Somehow, she didn't want to tell me when I got better, but I found out anyway. To me it was another bit of proof I wasn't worth s**t to anyone..other than my parents (who always seemed to have more on their plates than enough). It was that first part to accepting my own death, when kid aren't that is. When I got sick, I told my mom it was just ok to let me go because I didn't want to burnen her. Now, I think it wasn't my place to say because I was always sick, I always seemed like I was going to fade away.

Ahh...but family stories, could make writers of anyone. My mother checks off the tales, of things no one will say, but I don't know how they bare. My aunt husband cheated on her the day after the wedding with a cousin who was just 13, that cousin sister got pregant with her 1st (or 2nd) cousin's baby, I guess the 1st abortion. The father of the unborn child, has never gotten married, his mother (a b***h) seems to have everything she wanted (other than bigger say in all our lives) and grandchildren that seem will never come.

My parents, met when my mother was like...11 and my father 18, the link between them was my uncles were him and his brother's childhood friends. Later, later on my grandmother (the egg donor I wouldn't havem trust s**t for) hooked them up. They have been married 25 years, but no claps because it's not been all sugar and spice...but a lot of moldy bitterness...I always felt like saying no one asked y'all you to get married, I knew I wouldn't have given a f**k (I was already 6 months born)...The only child of this after ununion is a son of a b***h..I wish a well placed abortion would have zapped his a*s because he's like poison to my mother's heart.

(Yeah...a bit cold hearted, but that's his fault)

I"m not really close to my family, outside my fucked up lil unit. I've always been a outsider looking in, that's why I don't trust a lot of them, and over the years I was very right to do so. I don't have a favorite cousin, aunt or uncle, the only time my family met one of my friends... The chick who was my best friend ended up rolling around with my kid cousin on my grandmother's livingroom floor. Too bad I didn't have a shot gun because I should have shot them both. That was like the worst holiday season ever and people tell me that I shouldn't be upset because it's not my business they was f*****g like rabbits on the other hand I feel like you should never act like a big s**t around friend's family members, and well that I'm not cockblocking if I admit the b***h is crazy. So I'm down one friend, and I'm still not talking to that particular cousin. Oddly..to wrap it back up his mother was the one who was sleeping with my aunt's husband... (We need more shotguns, I swear).

I'm going to shut up...I ramble too much.