I love it when you call me names

(...I think)

I’m still emailing intermittently with the donor’s son, and a bit with the granddaughter.

The son refers to me as “sis”, and the granddaughter as “Auntie [my first name.]” (should there be a period somewhere at the end of that sentence? Grammarly friends, e.g. KS, please weigh in!!!)

It makes me so, so giddy to hear those words. I feel accepted, welcomed, appreciated, familiar. There’s that root word again.

But the communication is, as I said, intermittent, so I feel anxious. The cycle is like this: I worry that everyone in that family is freaked out about the whole thing, or by me, and I’ll never hear from them again. I try to work through these feelings and focus on accepting that this might be the case, if not now, later. And then I’ll send an email and get a reply that leaves me elated, so many welcoming words. And then I’m giddy all over again, wondering what I was ever worried about. And then the same thing again.

My therapist reminds me that everyone gets to be their own person and I remind myself that we’re all weird and it’s usually not a good idea to attempt to interpret someone’s actions. We have no idea what it’s like to be them. (A few of my closest friends get certain key parts of me that seem so hard to understand and I’m deeply grateful for that.)

She also reminds me that whatever I get from this family is what I get, and there’s nothing I can/should do about it—which seems reasonable.

And my friend MAC has pointed out that me longing for/waiting for something is a way of being that is familiar to me. If I weren’t wondering/worrying about a reply from them, it would be from someone else. Or I’d be worrying/wondering about another situation. It’s a need I have and that is important to acknowledge.

It’s true—this whole 8+ months have pushed most of my other worries aside.

Back to names—I told my brother-that-I-grew-up-with that he was my brother, not my half-brother. I never imagined I’d refer to the donor’s son as a half-brother, let alone brother. But his welcoming of me, combined with my brother’s aversion to talking about/hearing about any of this, makes me feel okay about the names.

Not just okay about them but wanting them.

I’m trying to remember I don’t need to feel guilty, and that I am enough no matter what anyone calls me, or when, or how often.

But it’s hard, to put it mildly.