Footnotes 

It hurts my family to know that I never felt like I fit in with them.  Hearing or reading this truth is like a knife slashing across their chests.  I didn’t realize that until now.  Oh believe me, it hurts me too.  But I’ve been dealing with that knowledge since my parents remarried.  I’ve had 26 years with it.  To dull the pain.  For them the truth is fresh; raw and bloody.  And although I could have kept this truth a secret, I have learned that hiding the truth doesn’t make it any less….true.

A part of their pain seems to come from the worry that maybe they didn’t do enough or work hard enough to make me feel like I belonged.  And to that I can only reassure them that their efforts were valiant.  There was nothing else to be done.  And the other part seems to stem from the question that if I feel this way, perhaps I don’t love them as much as they love me.  But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.  For I have always loved them all as much as any sister or daughter is capable of.

It’s not that they or I or our love for each other was ever inadequate.  It was a simple matter of facts.  Of logistics.  Of circumstance.  Plainly obvious to any passer by with my family’s oblivion simply being a loving and hopeful denial.  And I never burst their bubble.  I played my part well.  If believing I was comfortable made them happy; then I wouldn’t disappoint them.  But today let’s set hopes and feelings and denials aside. Let’s look at it objectively.

Both of my parents remarried people with no children.  They both went on to have children with their new spouses.  To anyone looking in it would have appeared so picturesque.  Beautiful babies rounding out beautiful families.  And then there was me.  Ten years old and looking nothing like any of them aside from my biological parents.  Always donning a blazing asterisk.  Always requiring an explanation.  All of us lugging around my footnote.  There was never a shortage of odd looks or questioning eyes from those who didn’t already have the answers.

When we would be introduced as a family, I could almost hear the Sesame Street song ‘one of these things is not like the others..’ playing inside people’s heads.  I was the stand out.  That thing that just wasn’t the same.  I was the legacy.  And there was nothing anybody could do about that.  It was what it was.  My truth.  I remember one day during a teen-aged sulking episode, lagging behind one of my families as they walked on ahead.  I remember thinking how perfectly happy and normal they all looked; if only it weren’t for me.

And yet, I was never depressed by my truth.  If I had to assign a feeling, I would say it was….lonely.  For two reasons.  First because there was no one else like me around.  I was unique to my family and friends alike.  And second because I couldn’t talk about it.  I couldn’t give it a voice.  It’s not like I didn’t see them all trying.  Struggling to make themselves and everyone else believe that there was no difference between our family and any other.  Watching them curtly answer questions like ‘Wow, there is quite an age difference between your children.  How long have you been married?’; as if it wasn’t a completely reasonable question.  They were pretending, so I did too.  For them.

But to myself I couldn’t pretend so well.  I remember wishing that I could hurry and grow up so that I could have a husband of my own.  A house of my own.  A family of my own.  Because then I wouldn’t have the asterisk or need the footnote or be the legacy anymore.  I would finally be normal.  Simply the ‘wife’ or simply the ‘mom’.  No explanation required.  So I put my life on fast forward.  Running away and running towards.  And that part makes me angry with myself.  For I was in such a hurry to become someone else that I never took the time to find out who I really was.  I stole that from myself. Those years of early adulthood.  Being single, living alone, and getting to know….me.

So what can be done?  If the facts can’t change.  If trying harder doesn’t work.  If you can’t love it away.  What can all of the divorced parents in blended families do for their own precious asterisked children?  I can only say this: accept and embrace the truth; then give it a voice.  Of all the hard talks parents have with their children about drugs and sex and teenage drinking, how hard can it be to let them know that you see they don’t fit; that it’s as obvious as the nose on your face, but you love them anyway.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of my mother.  Being a new mother again, she would sometimes get overwhelmed (she had her next two children 17 months apart).  And amid those early and frazzled years she would sometimes smile at me and  say ‘if this gets much worse, I’m going to pack you up and we’ll run away to Timbuktu’.  I knew she never meant it, neither one of us actually wanted to leave.  But I could actually feel myself swell as she spoke the words.  Because what I heard her say was ‘I know you don’t fit in here.  I know this feels weird.  But you belong with me.  And no matter what changes you’ve endured or what changes are to come, you will always belong with me.’.  And in that moment, the truth would shine from her and suddenly I’d find myself home.