Surrogate Family - Loved and Lost

I saw someone today I hadn't seen in some time.  Actually, I saw three someones, but only one of them said anything to me.

I've talked before on other blogs about a family that I knew when I was a Christian.  I was very close to them.  To me, they were a surrogate family.  I watched the way that they interacted with one another and wished that I had something like that.  In particular, I wished for the kind of father/daughter relationship that the father had with his daughter, who was a good friend of mine at the time.  And after some time of knowing them, they DID call me one of their "daughters".  They told me that I was one of them.

I've tried to parse my feelings on this over the years.  I've asked myself why I was so attached to them.  Did I have feelings that were in any way inappropriate?  I suppose it depends on your definition of inappropriate, but in a word, no.  They were my family.  At the most, I could say I had a "family crush" on them... I wanted to be close to them but didn't know how, I was worried that I was coming on too strong, too needy, too awkward.
At any rate, over time I started to feel like I didn't really know how or where I fit in there, and that maybe my feelings about being one of them were deeper than theirs of actually wanting me around.  I know that it sounds strange, but that's really how it felt, and I don't have another way of putting it.  My Dad wasn't there for me growing up.  He wasn't there for me as an ADULT.  Heck, in the time between then and now, my Dad, upon moving to the same town as me, has somehow managed to figure out how to be FURTHER away and LESS accessible than he was when he lived in Wisconsin.  My Mother and I were not terribly close, and I wasn't connected that well with my own family because of a variety of things... and so this family was my family, their Mother my Mother, their Father my Father, their brother and sister my brother and sister... but never having much self-confidence anyway (and being that I felt like most of my own family really didn't want me around at all), I never felt completely assured that they DID care that much for me, that they DID love me like one of their own, and that they DID want me around.  And sadly, it's not something I ever really knew how to talk to them about.


I made a couple of decisions, that seemed simple and somehow weren't.  I switched churches, for one.   I think that they thought I should have stayed at the one I was at in the first place.  For another, I started dating someone, and I think that they thought I should stay single for a while (they had issues with dating. Long story.)

I didn't hear from them for a long time.  I heard from a friend that they hadn't agreed with some life decisions that I'd made and weren't talking to me.  Eventually, I called them up.  At some point, I confronted them on what my friend had told me.  The Dad said he didn't remember ever saying that.  No one else had an answer.


I felt too weird about it, and he felt like I was too worked up about it.  I just wanted them to be straight with me, and I couldn't understand why they weren't.  I felt wronged by the idea that they'd stopped talking to me over decisions that were my own to make, but I couldn't explain why I'd not called them for so long.  I got upset and confused, I think that they just got confused, and we stopped talking to one another.

I was angry for a long time.   To me it felt like the word "family" had been thrown around and that it hadn't ever meant anything.  I felt hurt that they could quit talking to me and leave me out of their lives over things that seemed so petty and stupid and really, none of their business to judge in such a way.  I felt hurt and abandoned and frustrated because they couldn't even explain it to me.   And I let go and walked away, because I didn't know what else to do.

Today, when I saw three of them... Mom, Dad, and brother.  Mom and brother didn't talk to me.  Dad gave me a hug and shook hands with my fiance, Chris.  At the time I didn't really know what to think, because  honestly it was sorta sudden and when he got up from where he'd been sitting,  I didn't realize that he was coming over to do that.  When he did, I felt like crying and laughing at the same time.   I felt like he was saying, "Despite everything, I still care."  I had NO idea how to respond, but it was at that moment that I realized that at some point, when I wasn't paying attention, I'd stopped being angry with them.  I let it go.    I didn't feel that I could be close to them again, particularly when my life is so much different than it once was (and I think that part of me is just terribly uncomfortable knowing that they disapprove of so many things in my life, and that I disagree with the idea that those things are somehow wrong), but I wasn't angry anymore.

I wish that I could explain it but... there is this whole section of my life that is simply cut off to me.  It is, in a very real way, just not who I am anymore.  There are parts that I sometimes miss, and parts that remind me that I'm happier and more fulfilled now.  But even though I still love them and still would love to talk to them, I don't think they'd LIKE who I am now.  And I don't think there's anything wrong with that person.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry with them for that, mostly because I don't even know it for sure and that wouldn't be fair.  But it's a strange feeling, to be cut off from these people, and in an odd way feel like no one's really at fault for that.

I regret some things that I said and some ways that I lashed out, but I also remember feeling so frustrated and confused and lost that I didn't know what else to do.  I couldn't understand them, and I don't think that they could understand me.  But I understood that they had, at some point, decided that I was unacceptable, and that was what had hurt.  In this world where we really, genuinely, long for unconditional love in some form, I had realized that it didn't exist there, and for reasons that really felt like they weren't fair.

For who I really am.

I'm not that person anymore.  Perhaps, really, I never was.  I was someone who desperately wanted to become a woman who could be loved like a daughter like they loved their daughter.  But I wasn't their daughter. 

And I suppose the reason it was always so difficult to deal with, is that for a very, very long time... I've felt like I wasn't anyone's daughter.  No one WANTED me to be their daughter.  Especially not my own biological father.

But that isn't their fault.

And so I don't hate them.  And honestly, in a way, I still love them.  But I'm not that person anymore, the one that they took in and cared for and who tried so hard to be one of them (but, really, always kinda stunk at it.)  Maybe that makes me a person who can never be loved by them.  I have no idea.

We all want people to love us for who we are.  Some of us just aren't quite sure who that person is.  And there are people in the world who can walk with us down the road to figuring us out.  And there are people, who are terribly well meaning, who try to help us, and by doing so lead us in a direction that isn't really right for us.  And when we cannot follow them anymore, it's confusing and frustrating for everyone.  In those circumstances, I don't really have any idea what to do, except for to keep loving them.  Because being angry eventually fades away, and hatred eats at your insides, but (at the risk of sounding like a 60's group) somehow, loving people always feels like the right thing.


I'm sorry for some of the things that I said.  And a part of me will always be sorry that I didn't know myself well enough or have enough confidence to just be who I was, and see if maybe they could love me for that.  I was too afraid that they wouldn't.  Maybe I'll find out someday, and maybe I won't.  If I were to pursue the question I don't think I'd have any idea where to start, but you never know.

In the meantime, for better or worse, I love.  And not everyone loves back.  But those who do, are well worth it.

Perhaps that's the best kind of family a person could ask for.



Love,
Crys