Unfriended on Facebook

So today I noticed that my half-sister has unfriended me on facebook. I’ve never met her and I only spoke to her once, but I was surprised to see that she unfriended me. I don’t know why for certain either. It probably has to do with our father, but since I never had anything negative with her, I’m surprised that she did this. A little back story…

I was adopted at birth. When I tracked down my birth mother, she refused to name my birth father and she died without revealing his identity, so I thought I would never know anything about him or my paternal family. To my shock, on Feb. 12^th 2011, I got a call out of the blue. He’d tracked me down. We took a paternity test to verify he was indeed my father and then made plans to meet up. I went to Washington DC with my daughter to meet him over Spring Break the 3rd week of March. Now, as a vacation, Melanie and I had a lot of fun. As a meeting with my father, it was bizarre, strange, unsettling and unpleasant. He was weird, strange, insulting, and often rude. I have no idea why he decided to find me because he made it clear he was uninterested in getting to know me or my daughter. He did love to talk about himself, repeating the same stories. Always referring to his father, his mother, his grandfather, his uncle, his family, not once relating it to me and how they fit into my history. (When I met them, my mother’s family immediately started to relate the people they talked about and how they were related to me. They made me feel like such a member of the family and so welcome. They were wonderful!) Maybe he has Alzheimer’s, maybe he was nervous, and maybe he is just that bizarre. I may never know. He flat out said he didn’t have any questions about us. He called me a big baby when I asked to turn back on a forced hike to a “park” that turned out to be a wooded trail, I was wearing a turtleneck and a sweater, because it was 44° when I got dressed, but then drove south and it was later afternoon and 78°; asked me why I named my daughter Melanie, swearing he’d never heard of that name before, then later telling me that Gone with the Wind was the 2^nd movie he’d ever seen and one of his all-time favorites (gee, the 2^nd lead female character is Melanie Wilkes!); he told an armed military sentry at Fort Bragg that my 12 year old daughter was “the one with the bombs!”; asked me why I was using “such big words”, this from a man who supposedly has 3 degrees (I was tempted to ask him if he needed me to give him a definition to anything.) He seemed to get really offended when we asked what his favorites were as if it was none of our business and how dare we ask him a question. This is part of how people get to know each other. They look for similarities, differences, and compatibilities. This was really disturbing me that he showed no real interest in hearing what we have to say. He criticized my spending habits (of which he knows nothing), commented twice that I must push my husband around (I certainly don’t) and told me I was a fool not to have become a government worker. This man is a total stranger, this is a man who abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and didn’t look back for 48 years. I couldn’t believe the nerve or alternately the weirdness of this man. After we got back from the trip, he called and told me all about his Easter, his health, his recent trip and not once AGAIN asking one single thing about me, my holiday or anything. I’d had enough and wrote him a letter that either he shape up or leave me alone. And yes, most of it was rude - right back at him. I haven’t heard a word since. I would have thought he would have wanted to try to make up for lost time. That maybe he’d try to make a good first impression. But I guess his ego was so huge he didn’t feel he needed to try or bother. To top it all off he has bi-polar disorder. Now my adopted mother, who raised me and abused me, had bi-polar disorder with borderline personality disorder. My husband’s ex-wife had bi-polar disorder with borderline personality disorder (not 100% confirmed, but there is a family history. Her behavior supports this belief,) she spent years trying to make us miserable. The last thing I need is another person who has bi-polar disorder (and probably with borderline personality disorder based on his narcissistic behavior exhibited.) I noticed that he and his 3^rd wife unfriended me on facebook a couple months back. “Oh, no, the birth father I never had rejected me again.” Now don’t think I took the step to tell him to behave better lightly or quickly. We had about a dozen hour+ long phone calls and spend 3 days together. Melanie and I both came right out and flatly asked “Don’t you want to know anything about us?” and he said, “No, in due time. “ I asked what that meant on our phone call after returning from Washington DC and he explained that he was the moderator at a singles group and they believed you get to know people “in due time”. Well, I'm not someone he was looking to date. It would make more sense that he would try to make up for all the lost time. I’ve had enough with crazy people.

This is by no means the full details; there were a number of additional insults and strange behavior, and not to mention the cheapness. He told me he was cheap. I didn’t realize just how cheap he would get. After the paternity test came back positive, he offered to pay for us to fly to visit. This would have cost him over $1100. I declined, as we’d already made our travel arrangements. So rationally, you would think a person would spend a couple dollars, still saving over $1100. When we were there, I don’t think he spent over $60 the entire visit. We spent 3 hours riding the subway so he could save $10 on parking; he had us walk 9 blocks so he could save $10 on lunch. He took us out to eat the first night to a restaurant in a strip mall that I would not have gone to alone in the daylight, let alone as a first impression. We were the only people in the entire place, other than the owner and his card playing buddies. The 2^nd night, it was a pizza-by-the-slice restaurant. The third night, Melanie asked if we could please eat on real plates, with real knives and forks, rather than plastic and paper plates like the first 2 nights. Honestly, a burger fried up in his own kitchen would have been better than the scary looking restaurant. At least it would have showed he cared enough to make us something. (To be fair, the first morning he did make us burnt waffles from a homemade concoction he was winging. We ate them and thanked him.) I also didn’t like that he kept changing the settings on my camera without asking (to match the photography assignment for a class he was taking - like he was going to turn in my photos!) and he didn’t seem to like that my camera was newer and had more features. He also seemed put out that my Lincoln was bigger than his Lincoln. Who cares about these things, I don't.

Now some positive things did come out of him finding me. I finally had answers and the missing pieces to me and my history. I finally feel whole. Then I found out I have 2 sisters and a brother. I’ve spoken to one of my sisters a few times now and she is awesome! I think we are a lot alike and I’m really looking forward to meeting her soon. She is closest in age to me at 44. (She has a daughter, a new niece!, I'm hoping to get to know her too!) The other sister, is the one who unfriended me, she is 36, with little in common that I could tell in our phone call. She and I spoke once and she was pleasant, but not too encouraging. I haven’t heard from her since. I left my brother, 40, a couple voice messages asking him to call my cell phone, which he returned by calling our land line during the afternoon at a time I would be at work. So I figured he isn’t ready to talk yet. I hope I’ll still be able to get to know my siblings.

Well, thanks for listening to my rant. Next post will be some of our Washington DC trip photos and some of the more fun details. I hope you all have a great day tomorrow!