/erased

divorce:: it's not just for unhappy couples anymore.

it's been nearly twenty years since the man responsible for half of my genetic makeup checked out. i'm feeling weird again.

so you have a new life, a new husband, and a new locale. peachy. what's left to do? divorce the inlaws! it was a gradual shift, apparent by the fact that i can't quite put my finger on any single event during my childhood at which point my parents said, "F U," or anything like that. it was most definitely not born out of necessity - from my understanding, the grandparentals did everything they could to both preserve their grandkids [us] as distinctly theirs while accepting that things would change in time according to our new family's dynamic. this was misconstrued as, "you can sit in the corner at REAL family functions and have your heads cut off in group photos" by my folks.

gosh.

this all took place with a great deal of drama, justification, and evasive rigamorale until my [step]dad honestly felt like all of my family hated him. think about it - my family. it sounds absolutely ludicrous. meh. that's what went down, with a whole lot of extraneous scuffles and petty grudges in between. for all intents and purposes, i might as well be an orphan at "that" family's functions. i was the only member of my family present at my cousin's wedding last summer; my parents and sister were quite possibly the only people the bride was related to on the entire friggin planet who weren't in attendance [a good two dozen of the groom's family flew in from germany].

i haven't seen my [step]dad's family in close to three years now.

it's funny how things work out. my dad dies when i'm two, i'm fortuitously granted another one at the age of five, and i, for all intents and purposes, again don't have one at age twenty-two. pat, my [step]dad, was never close to his father, either, albeit for different reasons.

it all comes down to namecalling.

i may quite possibly have the longest name [hispanics discluded] this side of the mississippi. this, and this primarily, is the reason for the mentioned family feud. forget it. i'm sleeping. i'll write about my grandma's letter [the stimulus for this entry] some other time.