(no subject)

[bubosquared]

So yeah. Family situation. I'll try and give you the ultra-brief version.

My mother's parents separated nearly twenty years ago. They divorced a little over ten years ago. Up until, oh, last week, the division of their possessions still wasn't done, because they were effectively not talking to each other. (And there's a bunch of issues about that whole thing as well, but I'll keep my materialistic side in check for now.)

I don't remember him at all. I was barely three when he left my grandmother. My brother was six months old. He's never even seen my youngest brother. I was eight or nine by the time I realised that I couldn't simply not have a grandfather on my mum's side, and when I asked my mother, she told me that I did have one, but that he lived in Antwerp (which seemed like the world away to me at the time) somewhere. I remember asking why he never came to see us, or even just sent us a birthday card or anything. Mum says she didn't know. I didn't find out until much later (a few years back, in fact) that he actually flat-out denied he had any grandchildren, quite basically because my mother (and her brother) "sided" with my grandmother over the seperation -- and by that he meant that they were still talking to her.

(Yet another reason to be thankful for a relatively sane family: I will never ever have to sit in a car and explain to my eight-year old daughter that my father, her grandfather, refuses all contact with us. I will never have to go twenty years without seeing my dad.)

He wants to see us. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Part of me is shrugging, "You don't know this guy. He's never really been a grandfather to you. Why should you want to get to know him? He never will be a grandfather to you, and you have nothing in common with him, so he really can't even be a friend. He denied you even existed, for nearly twenty years. Why?"
But another part of me is thinking, "He's my grandfather. And I want to know why," which makes no sense even to me.

I probably will end up going to meet him, but I'm making some rules for myself. I'm not going to lie to him. Last time he saw me, I was a three-year old blonde little tyke. Now, I'm, well, me. Nearly twenty-two, haven't seen my natural hair colour in almost two years, pierced and tatooed, and gay. When I go see my dad's parents, I cover my tattoos, and I bite my tongue when the subject of boyfriends comes up, becuase they're old and they deserve to live their last few years without yet another scandal in the family. He doesn't deserve that courtesy. If he wants grandchildren, he'll get a punk/goth dyke granddaughter, and he'll have to accept that. And I can't call him grandpa, even though calling him by his first name will be weird too.

I don't know. I just want this whole thing to go away. I'm more upset about him wanting to see us again than I ever was about him not wanting to see us.

Comments

Re: Proof that slash rules my life.

[rsadelle]

Hmm. Post traumatic stress. That could be it.

This is all third person limited to Draco, so I don't even have any of the characters noticing it.

X-Files seems like a really cool show, but on watching reruns, I've realized that Mulder is pretty ridiculous, not to mention the severe decline in quality after the movie came out.