Infernally Sinful

Not as much as sisters, or brothers or parents are concerned. The thin cord of tied life with a family died with my mother. She was the glue that held the five of us together. When she died I was left in a house full of strangers that I knew didn’t like me much. I am not my daddy’s child, I am only half sister to my sisters. My half brother isn’t even my brother. I don’t know anything about the other half of my family tree. My father abandoned me to the fate of familial ignorance. I have only rumors about who my father is. I don’t know if I have other siblings that could actually understand me.

I never felt like I belonged. I was always the one that was different. I knew my daddy thought I was a little off. My mother was afraid I actually was. My sisters clung to eat other and I was never really in that club. Which at the time was fine. They seemed emotionally stunted. They didn’t really make sense to me, the way they did things. Their feelings of being better than me. At least until I was 17 and found out that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I watch my mother forbid me to ask who my father really was. I never asked again but I have not been able to forgive her. I really want to. But she took to her grave a secret that was one of the reasons that kept me from having kids. I just couldn’t have kids and not know what kinda genetic history to tell them about. I would hate to have them only have my half sisters to count on if I am ever not there for them.

My dad and I don’t get along and a little of it is because I know that he isn’t my actual father. Not that he ever in the time that I was growing up made me feel like I wasn’t his. At least not till mama died. Except that last time he spanked me when I was 15. Saying that ‘I was good to you’. And me knowing that he couldn’t have treated me any different and have kept my mother all those years. It was like all the promises that he made to her were off because she had the gall to die on him. Leaving him with three teens to finish raising alone.

He still hasn’t forgiven her. I haven’t forgiven him for being a hypocrite in love and then telling me who I should be with. He says why can’t I find a good brother. I have never met one that was for me. And I have never wanted one. Truely. I know what I want and have always been able to get it. Why should I appease him and be in misery?

I didn’t help him finish raising my half sisters, they are not my kids. I didn’t owe him that. I deserved to be happy with my husband, to finish my education that I have always paid for myself. I deserved to do what I needed to do.

I have always been raised to be a strong and very willful woman. I am not the kind of woman a man with power issues needs to get involved with. I am not kind to the male ego. If you aren’t strong enough to stand on your own I will not be the woman that you can lean on to prop you up. Not because you are too weak a man to have ever done it on your own. You have to be a man on your own before you can be a man with me.

But I digress. The only family that has been there for me and continues to be there for me is my Urban one. Diverse, made up of friends, exs, current, internet only and me. Short, black, left handed me. It is a beautiful thing. These people accept me, horns and all, most of the time. But they don’t stifle me, they expect me to be me and know that is what I will always be. I treasure each of you for that.

Blood is thicker than water but you need both to live.

Mocha