I’m sitting here in a dark corner of the room beginning to write this out. It’s really setting the tone to how I feel right now. I want to hide. I don’t really want to type this all out, but I haven’t been sleeping well. My guilt is overwhelming me and I know that after I type this all out and send it, I’ll feel a helluva lot better. It’s just that first step that’s the hardest when you have to admit, “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

My mistake started back in December. An alert went off on my husband’s calendar. He wasn’t sure why it was still on there and quickly turned it off hoping that I hadn’t noticed. I did. I asked him what it was and jokingly wondered if it was a Christmas surprise. I grinned at him but I could see the hurt on his face. I could see the hesitation and so I asked again, but this time I also asked if he was okay. He shrugged and held up his phone. It was my biological mother’s birthday.

I took a deep breath and nodded. It was his turn to ask if I was okay. He explained that he wasn’t sure why it was on there. It didn’t go off last year, at least he couldn’t remember if it did. I reminded him that I have to remind him to use the calendar sometimes. We joked around about being nagging husbands and went about our day.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the day. What it was for someone else. What that meant. Christmas was also coming up. We were having a tough end of year. Joel had just gotten unfairly dismissed. We were in for a big fight. We felt alone, even though we were a good team, but damn it, we wished we had a big family to fall back on. We ended up finding a great one online, as love started pouring in from my reader-base. My fans? Do I sound egotistical calling them that? It seems foreign on my tongue. I’m not used to it, but the point is, they came through in a big way.

But I made a big mistake. A really big one.

I got sentimental. I thought about the day that still had an alert on my husband’s phone. It is no longer there now. We made sure of it, but it made me do the math and I realised how old my biological mother would be.

61.

And it hit me, hard in the chest, that though she probably has many more years ahead of her… I don’t know how else to put it… I just felt like her age really hit me and that we had spent the last four years not speaking because of hate. Because I stood up to them and their beliefs… I spoke up when all they wanted to do was silence me. That part of the story is here.

Compassion filled my heart and with Christmas coming up, it hit me even harder. I took a few days to think over this compulsion. I asked my husband. He was against it. At least he was honest about it. My therapist was more neutral. The more I talked about it with them, the more they could see this was important to me. I needed to be the good guy here. I needed to reach out.

And so I made my mistake. I called my biological mother up and wished her a belated happy birthday. I asked her about Christmas. We talked about the Australian bushfires. We talked about the weather in Michigan. We talked for quite awhile.

I could hear it in her voice. She was excited to talk to me. I could also hear the hesitation. There was hesitation in my voice, too. I was very careful with what I said. She was very careful with what she said.

That’s when I offered that we could try and reconnect. Leave the difficult conversations for later but for now, focus on starting a new relationship. See where that goes. Talk every two weeks. I’ll call one week. She’ll call the next. Even set up a way we could talk online so there wasn’t a huge phone bill. We ended up using Instagram of all places. Though I did try and get her onto Whatsapp, but she just couldn’t figure the application out.

I’m so sorry but I didn’t stop there. I ended up contacting my biological brother and sister. We pretty much had the very same conversation that I had with my biological mother. All of us agreed to reaching out every two weeks.

I was nervous. Scared. Wary. I marked which weeks were mine and which weeks were theirs. I started something and I was going to see it through.

And that’s when things went horribly wrong.

I sit here typing this and there are voices in my head I’m thinking some of you are saying to me right now. Completely irrational and untrue as I have no idea what you are thinking of me and it’s really none of my business, but that’s just the way my brain works. I try to gauge in people how I come across. It’s how I make my decisions sometimes.

“You asked for this.”

“It’s your own fault it went horribly wrong.”

“Why did you call?”

“You did it again? It’s a cycle for you. Insanity. Doing the same thing expecting a different result.”

I can actually picture the people in my life who have said these things to me. Victim blaming.

I’m victim blaming myself and I don’t know how to silence these voices in my head.

I’m sorry.

I talked to each of them for about an hour the first time. The time frame in which I had called left them all due to call me back around Christmas time. I almost regretted my timing. I didn’t want to expect their calls around the holidays. What if they didn’t? I’d just be disappointed. We were already having a tough year. I almost felt like I was asking to be hurt.

And there I go again, victim blaming.

“You’re making me angry. It’s like you’re asking me to hurt you.”

“Why are you like this? You want to see me lose it?”

“Why can’t you just stay out of the way?”

“You’re a curse. The curse of the first born. That’s what you are.”

Around and around the cycle goes.

My biological brother contacted me first. Right on time. We talked for a moment. Caught up on a few things. It was pleasant. I was surprised. My husband was surprised. We had thought my biological brother’s religious convictions would make this interaction the hardest. But it wasn’t. It was the easiest. For now.

My biological mother sent me a message that she was doing a lot of overtime but she would contact me in a few days. That was fine. At least there wasn’t silence and when we did catch up it was also a pleasant conversation. It was like having a conversation with a friendly person at the shops or at the train station. Or meeting up with an old friend and sticking to the basics before you went back to your current lives. I was okay with this. And things were going great… for now.

I heard nothing from my biological sister.

Like clockwork, my biological brother and I conversed with each other. There was a week that was full on for me and I had forgotten to reach out… a day late I was… and I was so disappointed in myself. I apologised profusely to him. We caught up and things were great. Learnt a lot about his mental health the last four years and how much he was struggling even now. We even talked about my books, which he hadn’t read yet or even bought because of financial issues. I completely understood. My biological brother was never really a reader of any of my works growing up, so it wasn’t really a need for me for his support. And I totally understood his situation. My husband and I were in a crisis of our own. It can take a long time before things get back together.

The conversation between my biological mother was going okay, but I was uncomfortable with the constant interruptions of my biological father in the background. It was almost as if I were on speaker phone and he could hear every word I was saying. He had a comment almost for anything and no matter how hard I try to make it clear to my biological mother that I was calling to talk to her, they just didn’t get the hint. I wasn’t game enough to be as blunt as I wanted to be. I just put up with it and ignored him. Never answered his questions if he ever tried to ask me directly. I had no interest in reconnecting with him. There was no way we could be friends. There was no possible way I was going to have anything but the relationship we already had… one where we were not talking and I no longer had to deal with his hatred, his horrible letters, his condescending tone. After all, the last time we spoke, he told my husband to shut up and that he had no say in family matters because he would never be my wife.

It was getting to the end of January and I still hadn’t heard from my biological sister. At this point, I had two choices. Just accept the fact that she didn’t want to talk to me… or reach out one more time… and fate seemed to answer for me, she added me on Instagram… but never DMed me. So I waited a bit longer.

My legs are tapping as I write this because I know what’s coming. The frustration. The anger. The thing I apparently asked to happen all because I was compassionate and had this need to try again… to reach out… be the good guy… offer an olive branch… let the white flag wave proudly…

…the hurt.

I sent a message to my biological sister. I was blunt. I said, “I’m a bit confused. We had this great conversation. We agreed to reach out to each other. You even added me on Instagram but sent no message. Look, it’s fine if you don’t want to start over. I get it. Four years is a long time. That’s fine. But at least I tried, you know?”

It didn’t take her long to respond. Her message was pretty much that she had been too busy.

At the same time I got enough guts to send out that message, my biological mother posted publicly on my Instagram account that between work and life things were getting busy and she’d have no time to chat except in the first or second week of March. That was over a month away.

…

My heart is suddenly racing. I can feel my blood pressure go up. It’s been almost a month since this has all happened and I still get angry about it. I want to stop writing. I want to forget this whole thing. I don’t want to admit my mistake. I don’t want to be open to the shame I feel for putting myself back into their abuse.

But I do because I need to. How many of us hunger so much for this ideal of a family society has drilled into us that we just stay in this cycle of abuse? It doesn’t matter that I had compassion. That I did this all for the right reasons. It doesn’t matter my intent because the truth is, I did the very thing I was telling others not to do publicly.

Do not go back. Live your life. Be you. Choose your family. You aren’t born into them.

I hid all this from the public. Only a handful of people knew what I was going through. And when the anger and frustration and hurt came… I just looked in the mirror and said to myself, “You did this to yourself.”

I continued to converse with my biological brother. At this point, there was no issues. I looked forward to our chats. The last thing we talked about was the new Sonic movie, how I was hoping he was looking after himself and doing this for him… he even informed me that for the last few years he was volunteering at an lgbt+ pride event in Michigan. He had learnt a lot about their perspective and some of the things I might have been going through. It was an amazing conversation.

My biological sister, however, I ended that conversation before it even began. If she didn’t have time to converse every two weeks, then the relationship really didn’t mean all that much anyway. In my eyes, if she truly wanted it, she would have made the effort. She’d want it with every fibre of her being… at least, that’s how I wished it.

Perhaps my ideal family is too much to expect from them. Perhaps I was trying to put them all into a role they could never fill.

Perhaps it is me… and not them. They’re just the kind of people they are and I just want to change them into the kind of people I wish they were…

Tears are welling in my eyes. It’s hard to swallow. I sit in the shadows of the corner of this room and I just want to hide away and never come out. Perhaps this why I’m not sleeping well.

I need family and friends who want to be with me.

And my biological family make me feel I’m asking for the impossible.

Two weeks. One conversation. Could have been 5 minutes. An hour. The whole day off and on. Hell, it could have been 30 expletive seconds for expletive sakes.

So I haven’t talked to my biological sister since. She sent me one last message that said she refused to stop talking to me. That she’d send messages when she wanted, even if I didn’t reply.

Is there such a thing as too little too late? And why did it have to be on their terms and not mine? For once?

As for my biological mother, she didn’t send me anymore private messages since the I’ll talk to you in a month maybe… maybe a week more than that… and I tried to wait. I tried not to send her a message. I tried to swallow that big part of me that was screaming…

I AM WORTH WANTING TO CONTACT EVERY TWO WEEKS. I AM WORTH IT! YOU KNOW WHAT? EVERY TWO WEEKS ISN’T ENOUGH! THAT’S HOW WORTH IT I AM!!

I wish that was louder than the internal victim blaming… I really do…

I am worth more than every two weeks, aren’t I?

Joel… husband… I am… aren’t I?

**Full Disclosure**

My husband was studying his university course when he suddenly heard me break down into uncontrollable sobs. He threw his stuff aside and came rushing to my side and pulled me into his arms. Thus answering the question I was typing for him… unsure why I was typing it when it wasn’t as if his words would magically appear afterwards… but they sorta did, didn’t they? I clung to him. My tears dampening his shoulder and I knew the answer to my question. In fact, it’s because of him that I knew my self worth. He reminds me of it every single day of my life.

****

I am worth every two weeks. I am work every week. I am worth every single expletive day, damn it. And I knew that. And that’s why I was blunt with my sister. That’s why I stood up once again to my biological mother’s bullshit. It’s why I gave up when my biological brother suddenly stopped talking to me after I coincidentally sent that message to my biological sister… and a voice message to my biological mother…

I told her that I had hoped we would have kept talking. That would could have talked about what happened 3-4 years ago which led to our silence. But since every two weeks seemed to be hard for them and they didn’t seem to want to make the effort for me that I’d say it all now. I told her that whether they wanted to accept it or not they had a son that was part of the LGBT Community. I told her that I felt that to be a true part of my family that meant that they should support it and stand up to the hatred and homophobia that came with it…not be a part of it. I told her that as a member of the LGBT Community I was going to stand up to their beliefs…that being gay was as bad as parts of their Bible said…even though they skip over the other parts they don’t like…or leaving up to their god to judge me and my community. I told her that for the rest of my life I was going to stand up to it and tell the world how that belief is wrong…that I can’t understand how this everlasting god could be so hateful…even after admitting he creates all his creations…even my community. I told her that the letter my biological father had sent me was hateful and the way that he spoke to my husband was worse. Of course I was going to stand up to that. I did nothing wrong 3-4 years ago, I told her, except stand up to your prejudice. I told her that they can call me liars over being raped, molested and abused all they want while they congratulated my biological sister for being brave…but it wouldn’t silence me…not this time. I told her that talking with me every two weeks shouldn’t be that hard and telling me that their life is too busy and they’ll talk to me in a month was unacceptable. I told her. I told her that if she truly wanted to reconnect, she truly wanted to build a relationship from nothing and perhaps one day create a new family, then she would have made every effort to do so. I told her I had tried and it just wasn’t working. I told her that I accept the fact that they will never live up to my expectations.

I told her that I wished her well. I wished her husband well, her straight son and her straight daughter well. I told her I hoped she had the family she wanted and that I wouldn’t be calling again. I wouldn’t contact again. Not even if my compassion overwhelmed me. No matter how much I felt life was too short. No matter how badly I wanted an ideal family.

I was not going to get it from them.

I told her goodbye.

And all my decisions weighed heavily on my shoulders. All of them. As I silently suffered. I chose the silence. I didn’t tweet about it. I didn’t blog about it until now. Because in my mind’s eyes, I was victim blaming. I chose to reach out. I chose to go on that journey. I chose to do this during a time where my husband and I were struggling and just wanted a glimmer of hope…a reason to smile…but that glimmer and that reason was not with them.

It’s been a month since then. I still can’t find my self worth. I’m still struggling with answering, Am I worth every two weeks? I hear the answers from others. I hear the answer from my mental health team.

Yes. And a part of me. That strength in me I have had since I was the boy who smiled…it’s saying yes too.

But…my biological family has said no. Other family and friends have said no. Past employers whom I had spent years building a relationship with said no. So many people say no. I’m hearing more no’s than I’m hearing yes’s and that’s hard to fight against.

Especially when one of the loudest, “No, Michael, you’re not worth it,” is coming from within.