What does "Family" mean to you?

I want to talk a little bit more about my sister . . . But it seemed . . . well . . . rude to do it on her birthday . . . so I decided to do it today instead.

I grew up as pretty much an only child . . . I am my moms only child . . . my DAD Has 4 other children, all older than me . . . And my bio father has one other daughter, who is younger than me. Does that make sense? Hope so.

My older siblings always thought of me as a nuisance . . . and never really wanted to have anything to do with me . . . I thought they were so cool and wonderful when I was little . . . But then as an adult, I know just how badly they are fucked up.

When I was 13 or was it 11 . . . what ever . . . in that time frame at least, I got a call from my bio father that I was a big sister . . . Tiffini was born! I was so excited . . . I couldn't wait to someday have a relationship with her . . . to be the big sister I never got to have with my older siblings. I wanted so much to go and do the sister shopping thing, and call each other and talk for long hours about special sister things . . . I wanted that fantasy . . . but like with all fantasies . . . reality pales by comparison.

My younger sister and I don't get along . . . we don't see eye to eye on . . . pretty much anything. . . Every conversation I have ever had with her she tells me how "Brilliant" she is . . . and then spends the rest of the conversation saying "Some day I want to send out cards like you do." Well . . . in my world, if you want to send cards to people . . . you buy a card, get a stamp and a pen and write out the card and address it . . . and then put it in the mail . . . it doesn't take much more effort than that . . . It's really a simple thing . . . But if she is so brilliant. . . why can't she figure out how to do it? I think it's just one of those things that people say . . . like "oh your baby is so cute." when in their head they are thinking, "Did you have sex with an anteater? That is the ugliest baby I have ever seen!" Or she would tell me stories of our Bio father. . . and when I say I wish I knew him of that I don't have any stories of my own, or that I wish I had known him . . . I get yelled at by her, for not appreciating her ""Good Dad stories", and always turning them in to Bad dad stories" (Well, the man left and never paid child support, threatened to kidnap me when I was little, would call every couple years and make promises he would never follow through with and didn't come in to my life till I was 28 years old and to grown to care, still continued to make promises he wouldn't follow through with, and then one time he even told me I had a big butt.) Doesn't seem like very good stuff to me . . . even her stories are not that great . . . she stole a candy bar from a store once and hid it in her sock . . . he said to her, "I don't care if you are going to be a thief, but at least be a good one." WHAT?!?!!?!? What a goober!!!

My sister said to me once, after we had a tiff and I deleted her from my face book . . . "You said family was so important to you . . . and then you just delete us." (I actually deleted her, her husband and her daughter- the daughter I felt bad about, because she was simply guilty by association) The more I thought about it and what she said, "Family was so important to you." I figured out . . . that family relationships are like any other kind of relationship . . . it takes two to make it work . . . one person can't do it all by them selves. I was the only one really working on the relationship with my sister . . . and she pretty much just let me . . . I'm not blaming her for it, if I had someone who would do all the work in our relationship, I think I would let them. No, that's wrong, I'm not that kind of person . . . I think I would end up hating myself and them if I did that.

So I deleted my sister from my life . . . Humm . . . goodness it looks so bad to type that . . . I deleted my sister from my life . . . but you know what . . . I don't regret doing it . . . My life is simpler for it . . . and I don't stress and worry about it any more . . . I just know that we don't get a long and have chosen to live separate lives . . .

I realized that "blood makes a biological family" . . . true . . . but there are people who you are related to by blood that don't fit in to your life . . . who you just really don't like- who if you weren't related to by blood you would NEVER have anything to do with. That's how I feel about my sister . . .

I have taken a lot of people who are NOT related to me by blood and brought them into my life and home . . . and loved them as though they were related by blood . . .

Humm . . . I don't know . . . I think it comes down to "like finding like . . ." we find people who are like us . . . people who draw out the best in you . . . to come in to your life and build you up . . . the people who tear you down, are not the important people to have with you . . .

I think about how my older siblings have never really been a part of my life, and now that I have quit my younger sister, I'm an only child again . . . Well . . . no . . . not really . . . I have "SISTERS" who have been more "Sisterly"to me through my life than my sisters have . . . I will never be an only child again . . . as I have the most wonderful sisters in the world! (you know who you are!!!)