Letting go...

Hello, to anyone who might actually read this. I don't know if anyone will, but I had sort of a break through type of moment tonight that I wanted to share.

You see, last weekend, my grandmother died. It's been nearly two years since I had seen her, and before that, I'd gone three years since I'd been home. So it's not as if I was particularly close to her, not in the way that much of the rest of my family was. But let me go even further back.

For pretty much all of my life, I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I still feel like that sometimes, though I'm learning to embrace who I am whether people like me or not. But I really have felt like an outcast most of my life.

This feeling was always particularly acute with my mother's family. I know some of them may read this, and I hope that no feelings get hurt, because that isn't my intent, I'm just trying to explain how I came about this revelation tonight. My Mom has always kind of been the black sheep of the family, and I think they all always just accepted that Kathy was the way she was and wasn't going to change. But as a result, I just never felt quite right around my Mom's family. I didn't feel like my cousins, several of whom were a year or more older than me, really wanted much to do with me. They were all beautiful, popular, vivacious young women and I looked up to them so much. But I felt sort of like that cousin who you tolerate because they're family, but are glad when they've gone. Now I'm sure, having grown up and thought about it some, that they never intended to make me feel that way. But that is the way that I felt.

These feelings continued up through my adult life. I often sat quiet at the occasional family gatherings we attended, and would often have almost no one speak to me. I felt so alone in a big room full of people. And my Mom's family are bright, and happy, and fun people. But I felt like such an outcast. And for years, I blamed them.

Sounds horrible doesn't it? But the mind of a teenager and young adult is often a confused one. And I couldn't imagine that it was anything to do with me. It must have been them. Otherwise there must be something 'wrong' with me that made me unlikable. And that was even harder to face.

One experience that happened to me, was after I was all grown up and living out of the apartment attached to my Nan's house. I went with my Nan to a family gathering, at Easter or Thanksgiving, I'm not sure which. I had two cousins who were both pregnant at the time, and I won't name names. But I arrived with Nan and one of those cousins. The other cousin who was pregnant came out on the porch, walked around me as if I weren't there, to make a big fuss about our other pregnant cousin.

I then sat through a gathering in which  I was ignored by nearly everyone else in attendance. A few people spoke to me, but really, I felt entirely alone. When I went home I cried on my future husband/ex-husbands shoulder and vowed never to put myself through that sort of torture again. It wasn't worth it, I said, to be around people who couldn't even be bothered to give me the time of day, or who didn't want to try to get to know me.

Fast forward many years now. I've been married, had three kids, divorced, remarried and life is moving on. I've changed a lot over the years. When I was young I was so painfully shy. I've also had a pretty wicked inferiority complex most of my life. I've grown and changed and learned about myself. The people who know me now, in my little town in rural Indiana, can't reconcile the shy person I tell them I used to be, with the woman that they now know and love. I've had people tell me flat out, "You, shy? I just wouldn't believe it for a minute!"

And now, enter face book into the picture. My husband introduced me to it, right around the time I was also going through a myspace addiction. Facebook kind of hung around in the background for a while, but I've watched over the last couple years as it's just exploded. Everyone has a facebook now. Even my Grandma Eleanor, my Mom's step-mom, who must be in her eighties by now! She's got a facebook!

So I've had a facebook account for a while, but it's only in the last year, probably more like the last six months or so, that I've begun 'friending' my family. Both from my step-dad's side, and from my Mom's side. I'm friends on facebook now with most of my Aunts and Uncle's, several cousins. People who, even when I lived in PA, I had little contact with, and once I lived in Indiana, absolutely none at all.

But now, we have a window into each others lives. I see pictures of their kids, and their gatherings with our other family members, and I miss them. These people who I never gave myself the chance to get to know because I felt like such an undesirable person. I truly MISS them.

We 'like' and comment on each others status and pictures. Thanks to facebook I felt like I was present for my Nan's passing, even though I was 600 miles away in Indiana, because of reading all their facebook status updates. People in my family who I haven't spoken to in so long, we now tell each other 'love you more' which is what I'm learning was my Nan's signature phrase, all the time.

But it was tonight, when I asked for the recipe for my Nan's famous fudge and one my cousins said to me, "anything for you cousin" that I finally felt that wall just fall down. That high and impenetrable wall that I put up to deal with all the hurt and pain of a childhood with alcoholic and drug addicted parents, it just came tumblin down like that fabled wall of Jericho.

It was that wall, that bloody wall, that made me feel like an outcast. Not my family. People who I'm starting to see bits of in myself through their humor, their laughter, their compassion, their strength. I'm beginning to see those things in myself and realize that I really was a part of that family all along, I just wouldn't let myself be. It wasn't their fault that I felt like an outcast. It was just that I didn't love or even like myself enough to allow them into my inner sanctum, because I was too afraid of getting hurt. And as a result, I only caused myself unnecessary hurt and grief.

So if any of you are reading this now, let me say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I never got to know you better and that I never gave you the chance to know me. I'm sorry for harboring these bitter feelings all my life, and it feels so damn good, even though I'm sitting here crying like a baby with a red  nose and puffy eyes, to finally feel free of all these negative feelings I've left tucked away for so long.

I want to get to know you. I want to be part of each others lives. I want to share experiences with and know my family. People who I share a heritage with that I really know very little about. And I want to tell you, "I love you more..."