Post-Turkey Day

Back in Fargo. It's a lot chillier than I left it, but I'm definitely thankful for having less snow than Bismarck! Home was nice overall, I sure had a lot of time for thinking (to and by myself). Oh & BTW - I have to recommend the movie "Changeling" w/ Angelina Jolie. Good movie! And true story so I think that made it even better. The Fray's new single "You Found Me" is on iTunes!!! And if you're too cheap to buy a 99 cent song- you can go to http://thefray.net/ and listen to it there. I love it.. in a way, it kind of reminds me of myself and the tiny thought that crosses my mind every once in a great while.

Graduation Day. I get a card in the mail, not strange in any way, beings I had been getting cards for the past month for graduation. Except for one thing. The return address. My heart jumped and sank at the exact same moment. Why now? Why never before until 18 years later? Why when I was about to go through some of the biggest changes of my life? I read it. And read it again. You can't be serious?... So many things unsaid, so many questions left unanswered, and all you can say is that you're "proud of me, and hope we can keep in touch. Love, Dad". I thought to myself, "What can you possibly be proud of? You don't know me, anything about me. You have never known me, or even cared to." In complete shock, I wanted to cry, scream, yell, or rip up the card you had the nerve to send. It's a feeling no one can understand, unless you have been in the situation. It's one thing to have a father whom you've never met and have never contacted, and quite another to have a "father" who knew you for 2 years, knew where you have been all the years of your life, and still never put forth the effort. Usually, this doesn't bother me one bit. I have the greatest father in the whole wide world, and I am SO VERY thankful that he took me in and treated and loved me exactly as his own. He has in part made me who I am today, taught me how to laugh, how to love. I really could not ask for more.. But then there is always a part of me that just doesn't understand my real "father". How you could give up on a beautiful baby girl- let her slip away for all those years & then think you can miraculously enter back into her life. I'm angry at him. I am angry at his mother (my grandmother- who sent me Christmas & Birthday gifts as well as letters every once in awhile... Until I never wrote back to her son...) I am angry that she should ever think I should try to contact him. She'd send his address, and tell me how much we look alike. I had nothing to say to him, and I sure as hell didn't want to know I looked anything like the man who abandoned me. So now all I'm left with is a pink envelope containing a weak attempt at connection. It's addressed to me. From a man who never cared, ....or cared a little too late.