The Journey to Finding My Siblings

I shouldn't say that I needed to find them. I should maybe say that I needed to find a way to get to them without going through their mother. It is a long story so I will sum it up quickly. My father committed suicide when I was 18 and my siblings were two and four years old. I stayed in contact with them for the years following my father's death. We lived on opposite ends of the country though. I eventually moved back to NJ when I was 22 years old and they were about seven and nine years old. We were close for about a year and then my stepmother decided to just never return my calls or give me a reason why.

I left well enough alone for a while. They were minors and I understood why my stepmother suddenly didn't want me around or in their lives. She had remarried when they were still just toddlers and they believed that their stepfather was their real father. That meant that me saying I was their sister, but not their mother's child, or their "father's" child, was too confusing. She wanted to just leave my father behind in the dust and that meant me as well. After all, my father did blame my stepmother for his choice to kill himself and he did the deed on her birthday. I would want me gone too, considering that she had not dealt with all of this misery. She wished to erase anything Gary (my father) and that meant me too.

I decided that I couldn't fight with her. She wasn't the fighting type and would just allow me back in but make my life a living hell. I left things alone for one other reason, my brother and sister were minors. I decided that when the day came that they turned 18, I would get in touch with them, somehow. Sounded easier than it was though. Although I knew where they lived and their phone number, I couldn't just call or show up. I wasn't sure what it was that my stepmother told them as to where I was at. What if she told them that I had died or was in jail or something even more horrible? I couldn't take the chance that they would reject me because of a lie. That would have been more devastating to me than not having them around.