This is really happening!!

The Story

About seven years before I was born, my (then teenage) dad and his (even younger) high school girlfriend found themselves pregnant, with twins..

Kids having kids.

Her parents adopted the babies and moved away shortly afterwards, raising them as their own children.

My Dad grew up a bit, met my mother, she had me. He married Mom, then came Maggie.
TaaDaa, my family..

Then one day when I was about 12 years old my Mother told me the story for the first time.

I was honestly a little surprised that they had kept this from me. Even at 12 I thought it wasn't worth the secrecy.

These things happen.

This was the only time It was ever discussed in my family..

Outside of my family though, that's different..
Ive never kept my curiosity to myself!

Ive often daydreamed about these two brothers of mine..

You see, My sister is my best friend in the entire world! We are alike and different in all the best ways. Our voices sound the same even though were always talking about different things. Our days pretty much always end with tequila, though for different reasons. We can laugh, love and fight with each other only with the sideways glances the keep other people out of our loop.
So if I have all of this with my sister, surely some of it has to be based in our genetics?

Ive always believed that nature and nurture play equal parts in who we are.

Would I be able to read my brothers like I can read my sister?

If one day, I randomly ran into one of them, would I recognize him? If I did, would I know why? Would I feel the connection with them that I feel with the siblings I was raised with?

Would they look like me?
Would they like me?
Would they even want to have anything to do with me?

Do they even know that I exist?

Do they know where they came from?

I knew their first names and their birth-mother's first name and I was pretty sure I knew their last name but that was it..

By the time I was 16 I knew I would have to track them down one day.
 There was an open window in my heart and I couldn't get away from the draft.
I knew I would have to wait until Dad died.
It was too much to wonder about.
They weren't just characters that had been living in my imagination, they were real people and I needed to know them.
I needed them to know me.

and that was it

until about a month ago

I remember that I lost grip of my phone, I heard it hit the bathroom floor and then I followed my phone to the ground.
I came back to just a second later, Did I faint?
I don't faint..
In 30 years Ive passed out on two other occasions and both involving extreme physical pain.
What happened?
I saw my phone on the floor and remembered exactly what happened.
It was the story, the second time id ever heard it..
I got a fbook message from a woman I had never met. She was helping her niece track down her paternal biological grandfather.
She told me the story and wondered if my father could be the father of these twin boys..
I didn't answer her at first. I wasn't sure how to.
I didn't tell my sister immediately either, I'm still not sure why I didn't frantically call Magpie.
It was the proverbial ton of bricks..

I was going to find them one day.

I never (like never ever not in a million years ever EVER) expected them to appear in my world!

Especially not in the shape of a pretty, bright, blonde, teenage girl..
(Broome women are a few things; stern, cool, aloof and old.. high brows and pursed lips)

After two days the shock and awe wore off and I sent my sister a picture I took from this girls facebook and asked if they looked familiar?

They should, its our older brother and his daughter, our niece..

This is happening Mags..

So now a month or so has passed and Ive developed fbook relationships with these people who have so willingly accepted me as family. Both of my brothers, nieces, nephews, spouses, Moms and Aunts..
My sons went from having 3 cousins to 11 cousins (a 12th coming soon) overnight..

And on Saturday (deep breath, deep breath, like THIS Saturday) I will do something that I have been waiting twenty years to do.

I am going to meet my one of my brothers.

That window will finally start to close.

I still really cant believe it.
Every time I realize that I am less than 48 hours from this I just start to boohoo like a bitch..
I just really hope I can get through Saturday without hysterically sobbing. I don't like to cry, it makes me feel helpless and I don't cute cry. I cry with sobs and heaves and snot and swollen eyes..

So that's it..
Its happening..
On Saturday..
Hopefully ill have some pictures up pretty quickly to share with everyone..


Pippi

Making Stars

 

 

I'll Write When

I don't know when to write.
I don't know what to write for that matter.

Of course, my first goal was to start blogging again after the surprise preemie of Finneas.

But something went wrong as hell..

And things got really bad.

Post Partum Psychosis, my official diagnosis.
The Nothing as I call it, took control of my life.  Eighteen months of my own personal hell.  I cant describe what its like to be a mother who looks at her children and feels nothing.
The Nothing took my ability to love.
The Nothing took everything.

My second attempt at a writing goal was to write when things got better.
Guess what?
They didn't.

After that I said I would write when I got better.  Be brave with my story so that others will be brave with theirs.
Nope..
Turns out 'better' is a rather objective term.

Then comes, I will write about it when Im ready to talk about it. 

Then I decided that I don't really want to talk about it and I don't really have to. What I went through was very intimate and it is well guarded for a reason.

Just know that I was very, very sick but I am working very, very hard to get better.

Besides its a super long and complicate story!

In just one year

Everything changed..
One year ago tomorrow, my oldest boy, my situation, was diagnosed with epilepsy..
Its been one hell of a year since then..

That moment is one that I will forever carry with me.. Pres had always been different than other kids.. ADHD was obvious. The Aspergers became obvious the more I learned about it. In fact it became obvious that my Father and I are both Aspies, my grandmother probably was too..
The poor kid had been diagnosed with everything but there was always something that didn't quite line up..
Epilepsy hit me like a ton of bricks.. Everything else had been behavioral or developmental.. Epilepsy isn't just another quirk.
"This is a seizure, in fact these are all seizures.." Who in the hell was this Dr. Dave anyway I thought as i watched him point at his little computer screen..
"He has epilepsy" I heard echoing through my entire body. Just ringing louder and truer every time my heart beat. It didn't feel real. It COULDN'T be real. Then i felt something on me knee. Looked down and saw this Dr Dave's hand.. Mrs Tangman?
I fell back into reality with what felt like a house on top of me, it felt hot.. Oh god.. I grabbed the trash can next to me and barfed..
Just me, Pres, Dr Dave and can full of barf.. Dr Dave laughed and said something about how his wife was pregnant for a few years too..
Oh yea.. I'm pregnant.. ha ha..
Here's his prescriptions, a joke about Tri-scare and a reference to Comicon.. Have a safe drive home..
The hour long drive home.. SUCKED! I couldn't cry.. Or i didn't want t0 cry in front of him.. Pres was pretty used to seeing new docs and specialist but this was the first one who glued things to his head and made his Mommy puke..
So many things ran through my head.. How could my baby boy have been having 300 seizures a day and I didn't notice.. How was i going to call James and tell him that? How DARE my own family not believe me when i kept insisting that something else was wrong? Why do i have to fight the urge to run my truck over the side of this bridge?

How am I going to handle this?

I was already in a bad place.. I had just gotten the devastating news that the child i was carrying was in fact, another little boy..
Yea i said it, devastating.. It was crushing. It took the breath from my lips and ripped a whole in my heart the size of a matriarchy.. But that's for another day..

This whole blog is pretty much about the last year and how awful its been.. How its changed me. How I've "coped" with it.. How I lost all of my confidence as a Mom and a woman. How my marriage has gone to shit, my house looks like an A&E series, how my kids have been wearing the same dirty pj's for 2 days and all i want to do is make a fucking lamp out of mason jars because i have checked out.. In fact i checked out 6 months ago.. Some where in the haze of learning epilepsy, the fog of post partum psychosis and the shallow lie of my husband being anywhere but rehab, I stopped giving a shit..
And Guess What?? Nothing happened..
And then came a wake up call..
PTS or Perform to Serve..
Pretty much, its not looking like were going to be a navy family anymore.. And that sucks.. We pretty much depend on Tri-care to take care of Pres..
We will find out in less than 2 weeks.. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day.. I am so not ready for this..
I think I'm going to barf..