13-Jul-2006

I finally got to meet Tara (my sister) last night. I was surprisingly not nervous. I really thought I was going to be but for some reason I was very comfortable with the whole situation. We had dinner at the Olive Garden and were there for like 2 hours. I think it would have been longer (there’s like 21 years of catching up to do) but she had to pick up her son who was at a friend’s house… I guess 8pm is a little late to be out for a 4 year old. Next week I’m going to have dinner at her house (she’s making dinner for me) and I get to meet my nephew… that still amazes me that I’m an uncle.

I am incredibly happy that we got to meet and more so that things went well, but I had a hard time enjoying last night for two reasons. First, I didn’t get to learn much about her beyond where she’s been and what she does. I suppose thats ok, I’m a pretty open person about my past so maybe she was just more comfortable learning about me before giving me a lot about herself. Second, I’m pretty open about my past… I’m still incredibly pissed off about some things and hurt about some others and it really wouldn’t have been good of me to just hide it all, especially since she asked me the questions directly. So last night I was reliving (at least in part) some things I hated from my childhood, some of the bigger events in my life (which for most people the big events are the crappy ones), and the entire last 2 years of my life (which there are definitely some things in there I would prefer to not remember much less give a detailed telling of). Tara was pretty funny about one thing though… she got really protective for a second and almost offered to go slap someone for me.

I haven’t quite figured out how to go about talking to my Dad. Jill keeps offering to do it for me, but I think I should be the one to since I did find Tara and have been the one talking to her. I just don’t know how he’ll take it. I can’t imagine he’ll be upset that I’ve been talking to her, but I don’t know if he’ll want to talk to her. He told Jill that he would love to talk to Tara be he wouldn’t make the effort to find her. Tara says that she has some mixed feelings and that he has to be the one to initiate conversation (I agree with Tara by the way). I think I’m going to wait a week until I can go back up north again so I can talk to him in person.

For the 2nd time in my life I understand why people say they need time to think about something. I think the phrase is over used because somethings don’t require a lot of thought, but there are some things that really do need time to be worked out on a conscious level. I do, however, think that in situations like this, its better to talk with someone about it because a lot of the time thoughts are redundant and unproductive. Unfortunately for me right now, the more I talk about it and think about it the more angry I get… although its not helping that no one has told me that I shouldn’t be angry or that I’m not thinking about this the right way. I suppose I could just go on being angry and never really deal with this situation, but that would cause me to lose something that I’m not really willing to give up on.

My plans for Friday night were canceled (sigh… women) so if you’re bored call me.