{"id":87,"date":"2008-02-14T12:29:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T18:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/14\/thats-heavy-doc\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T12:29:34","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T18:29:34","slug":"thats-heavy-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/thats-heavy-doc\/","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s heavy, doc!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I borrowed that line from Marty McFly because that&#8217;s how I&#8217;ve been feeling lately.<\/p>\n<p>Friday night (Feb. 8th, I suppose) around 10:15 the phone rang.\u00a0 Being the hard-partying girl that I am, I was getting ready to settle in for the night and go to bed soon.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t recognize the phone number, but due to the time of night I could only guess that the phone call was important.\u00a0 I picked it up and I think it changed my life.<\/p>\n<p>I was greeted by someone who could tell me everything about myself.\u00a0 She knew my name, DOB, mother&#8217;s name, grandmother&#8217;s name, etc.\u00a0 It was Wilma, my biological father&#8217;s wife.\u00a0 Dennis, my biological father, was soon to join me on the phone.\u00a0 I learned a lot that night about his life, and about how unprepared I am to talk about myself and my life.\u00a0 I also learned that, no matter how much you think it doesn&#8217;t mean anything to you, it really feels good to know that you are wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I never knew Dennis until that day.\u00a0 He and my mother divorced undes less-than-ideal circumstanceswhen I was about 2\u00a0after having been seperated since I was a baby.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t remember him at all.\u00a0 I have a few pictures, but I can&#8217;t even really tell what he used to look like.\u00a0 I guess he&#8217;s a short guy.\u00a0 And I found out he had a stroke in 1984 that brought on many medical conditions like epilepsy.\u00a0 And since then he&#8217;s had two brain surgeries.\u00a0 He&#8217;s lived on social security disability since then.\u00a0 So I&#8217;m guessing there&#8217;s no huge inheritance to be had. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 And that&#8217;s okay because I never expected anything anyhow.\u00a0 I never really expected him to find me.\u00a0 And now I have more people in my life to deal with.\u00a0 Not that that&#8217;s a bad thing, i just don&#8217;t quite know how to handle it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I started writing him a letter, but I can&#8217;t bring myself to finish it.\u00a0 I had written a letter a couple of years ago as sort of a literary exercise.\u00a0 I titled it &#8220;The Letter I&#8217;ll Never Send&#8221; more because I had no address to send it to, but now I won&#8217;t send it because he&#8217;d be hurt and I don&#8217;t want to do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I spent so much emotional energy as a kid feeling rejected and lonely.\u00a0 And angry at my situation.\u00a0 I just wanted a family like everyone else.\u00a0 Now he wants to be a part of my life and I don&#8217;t know what to do.\u00a0 I guess I really do.\u00a0 Just get to know him, take it slow, and see what kind of a person he really is.\u00a0 People can look incredibly different depending on the lens you use to view them, and just because my mom saw him through the &#8220;wife&#8221; lens doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t see something different through my &#8220;estranged child&#8221; lens.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I got a flower delivery yesterday from him.\u00a0 He sent me 8 roses for Valentine&#8217;s Day and enclosed a card on which he wrote &#8220;I Love You, Dad.\u00a0 PS. I&#8217;m glad I found you.&#8221;\u00a0 In a way, it&#8217;s kind of creepy.\u00a0 In another way, it&#8217;s sad and sweet all in one.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m almost 30 and I feel like I have enough past to cover 60 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I borrowed that line from Marty McFly because that&#8217;s how I&#8217;ve been feeling lately. Friday night (Feb. 8th, I suppose) around 10:15 the phone rang.\u00a0 Being the hard-partying girl that I am, I was getting ready to settle in for the night and go to bed soon.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t recognize the phone number, but due [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3aAvV-1p","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jen.jllocke.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}