End-Of-The-Week-Ramblings:
Not that long ago, I was struggling with feeling like an “orphan” if you will. My sister had just died, and both my mother and father were already dead. I have one birth brother somewhere out there in the world who I never knew that Ancestry’s magic has yet to work finding. I felt the pressure of carrying the weight of our legacy on my shoulders, and it felt heavy.
I started out 2023 being introduced to blood family here online thanks to Ancestry and then Facebook and I have been enjoying that process. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit to being overwhelmed and overjoyed in equal measure. As many of you know, family has been particularly complicated for me.
Fear of rejection and abandonment, neglect and abuse, sexual violence, and as a result, downright distrust of the people who were supposed to care for me have left me in vulnerable spaces over the years. I’ve built walls, I’ve destroyed my self, my character, my phsical wellbeing in order to feel “safe” from the world and its potential to harm me.
Along the way, I have found solace and acceptance in various communities. For instance, fitting in with all of the alternative and punk rock kids in school, the so-called outcasts, became a family for me. When I came out and started to understand my sexuality and to date and make connections within the gay community- another family, if you will. Artists, writers, dancers, dj’s, drug dealers, and eventually my sober family .. all “families.”
I have created my own history and my own narrative, exerting as much control over the story as possible.
I’m not claiming that I’ve done it perfectly; I made a lot of mistakes, but years later, after everything I’ve done, and everywhere I’ve been – I have a family that is a blend of all of them. Family of choice, family by blood, neccessity, and even desperation. A hybrid of all the above.
Note: I don’t handle expectations very well.
Please be patient with me.
Please just know I love you.
We’re all works in progress.
February of 2023
MISTER WILLIAM REILLY 