Diary of a Sex-Starved Pseudo-Mennonite, Part 47

I found out this week fairly definitively (pending DNA confirmation) that my birth grandfather is likely my birth grandmother's stepfather and distant cousin. This is on my father's side. So it is relatively light incest, but likely very creepy. My birth grandmother had 3 children from this relationship that were adopted to 3 different families. 3 children. Her later life legitimate family knew nothing of this until I reached out to who would be my half uncle on Ancestry and we began to unravel a very big and at times quite stinky family onion. I am this kind of troublemaker. Seeking the truth. No matter who gets hurt.

My divorce came with a free name change. Hence the rebirth of Ness Sweet Ness. My dad named me Vanessa and my family and close childhood friends called me Ness, none of us knowing Ness was my birth last name, had my father not been adopted. I would have been Vanessa Ness or Ness Ness. I changed my middle name to Sweet per Big Al's suggestion. In 9th grade, some people called me Sweet Ness because I was sweet or Tender Ness, because I was batshit crazy for the song "(Try a Little) Tenderness" by Otis Redding. My ex-husband convinced me later that I was not Sweet. Or Tender. So now, each time I write or see or hear my chosen name, Vanessa Sweet Ness, I remember who I really am, and who gets to decide who I am.

After not reaching out to me in over a year and a half, which is actually a quite short interval of absence for my father, he sent me an email demanding that I acknowledge him. He actually wrote "Acknowledge please," as if this were his 10th attempt to reach me and not his 1st. As if this were a subpoena. Or a court order. Surely this email was not for me. He must have meant to send it to his birth mother in heaven, who actually did fail to acknowledge him for many excellent reasons. But my father doesn't believe in heaven or God or caring about his birth parents. Dad became an atheist when his own personal God, his adoptive father, died while my mother was pregnant with me. Seems Dad and I were finished before we started. I would always remind him 1st of the most painful loss of his life and 2nd of his many failures as a father and a man. None of this is my fault. I did not ask to be born, and then left. (And neither did my dad.) But here I am. 47 years old and still batting clean up on some deep ancestral mess. Messy Nessie. That's me.

My newly discovered aunt is a Pisces too, born the day after me many years prior. I started this fact-finding mess and she's finishing it, since I bowed out to divorce, mourn my step-father's sudden death, be told I'm too old to have children, have my remote work request denied for a WRITING job, sell my house, fuck a couple of unworthy men, fall in love with a couple of other absentees, move across the country to a place I did not intend due to another late breaking father death, catch heartbreak and COVID, find new work and a new place to live, and finally--I caught a clue. Vanessa, you need to stop holding space in your life for men who don't appreciate you and make a habit of greeting your love with withholding, if not with actual disinterest. Lovers. Ex-husbands. Ex-boyfriends. Ex-coworkers. Old friends. Fathers. Because people who can't greet your love with gratitude and at least meet you halfway don't actually love you. "Acknowledge please" types the father to the daughter he so consistently and successfully estranged for 45 years. At the very least, I think a "Pretty Please" was in order...

 

Perhaps in a quest to be seen, I have always liked things with my name on it. Vanessas used to be hard to find. And if you're speaking specifically about me, we still are. I've lived many places and met a lot of people. None of them are like me. It's hard to be me. Apparently I can take it. I hold on to the hope that 1 day I will be less tired and wake up energized and excited about life again.

Forfeited children crave acknowledgement. Identity affirmed. A name. Children left behind may build a flood wall made of their own children or accomplishments or lovers or booze or drugs or isolation or overgivng to stave off more loss and feelings of lack. But you can't hold back the tide. You can't lasso a tsunami. The tears need out. Have you ever seen a wall weep? Startling, isn't it?

I chose to be Vanessa Ness and it chose me. I mean, we only have so much control. Sometimes you just have to let go and go with the flow, even if the flow turns into a flood of tears the grandma you never met was not allowed to cry, so you need to cry them for her, and thank her for being so brave so you could be born and work through her pain until 1 day, the tears let up, and the sun shines, and you finally have the energy to kiss the caskets of those who came and went and loved and lost before you, then dance for joy on their aged graves.

Until Next Time, Sweeties!

Ness Sweet Ness