blood is thicker than water?

i need to write some about my family. the first thing is that i don't believe that i was ever meant to be. when i was born my mother was 30, and my father 50. i can't even argue the fact of them being in their right minds either, because i knew that both of them had their problems. the fact that there was 20 years difference in the age is a good clue. they both had trouble with alcohol although, i never seen it in mother until much later in life. i guess that i got my problems honest. it came from both gene's. i have suffered needlessly most of my life from addiction, but i don't hold my parents responsible, or lay any of the blame on them.
i was the only boy in my family. mother already had three daughters before i was born. sadly the first suffered crib death early on. the other two are 10-12 years my senior.
because they had a different father makes them my half-sisters. I'm just setting the record straight. i have in no way ever saw those girls as half anything. they have always been my sisters, as far as I'm concerned, and will forever be.
I've not always treated them right. actually, I've been really bad toward them, and more so as I've gotten older. I've just never been what a brother should be to them, but i have always loved them. i never learned how to show it right.
my life of addiction has led me to feel much guilt and shame for my past actions. it's a totally embarrassment at times the way that i have acted towards them. it got so bad that i finally just took myself out of the picture. i thought that would be the cure that i needed.
let the record show that my sisters never judged me because of my actions. they have tried to talk with me several times, and guide me back in the right direction, but i was so much smarter than them. i was the alpha dominate male, and nobody need to try to tell me anything. ....yep,..........that's right,................i was a fool!!

i need to get back to my daddy now. i never really knew my father. him and mother divorced when i was really young. i don't understand why, but mother put a great fear of him in me. if i saw him riding down the road i would act like somebody was fixing to kill me. the few times that he would try to visit, i would literally piss in my pants from fear. i was a mess whenever his name came up.
all this didn't happen until a couple years after the fact that mother refused to let me see him. there were times that i would go spend the day, or night with him. we didn't do much, but it always seemed that he was taking me around to show me off.
daddy had two daughters before with another woman, so i had two other half-sisters.  they were around 30 years older than i was. for some reason that always kept throwing up the phrase, blood is thicker than water. i always thought that they were talking down about my mother. i was too young to realize if they really were, but it still threw a red flag up.


years had went by without me seeing my father. i was a full blown man sitting in the county jail the next time i saw him. i had been in there for almost two weeks because of my problems with addiction. when i heard a frail voice calling out the name jimmy......jimmy crumly.  i peeked out of my cell, and saw this old man standing there. he said to me, do you want to go home? nobody called me jimmy since i enrolled in grade school. they said that my name was James, and that was what there were gonna call me.
i just laughed at him while cussing, and said that he must have the wrong guy, and who the hell are you to begin with? he said, boy don't you even recognize your own daddy with a tear in his eye. the sad thing is that i didn't. it had been so long since i saw him, but i no longer feared him either.
he got me out of jail that day, and mom was waiting in the lobby to take me home. that experience of daddy getting me out of jail was awkward to say the least. i wasn't sure what to do, or how to act, but i wanted to get out.
on the ride home mother started saying that it might be time for me to get to know my father. that i should spend sometime with him, but only if i wanted to get to know him. it was my choice, and she just wanted me to know that.
there was really some bad blood between my parents, especially mom. i did spend some time with him, and was getting to finally get to know the man that i had feared most of my life, and then he died. just my luck huh? he was turning out to be a pretty good feller, and more understanding than i ever though possible.
getting to know daddy for the first time in my life, brought the rest of his Klan back into the picture also. his mother, my grandma, died shortly after he did. his people didn't tell grandma that daddy had died for a couple months after. she was 104, and still functioning well. the news of daddy's death made her grieve herself to death. daddy was her baby child.
then there were my half-sisters. they thought just because that daddy and i had started over, that they could tell me what to do, and how to act. they kept naggin' me about getting married, and having a male child to carry the family name on. i was their last hope for another generation to exist. i made a decision that it was time to stop the madness!! time to end the curse, so others can live!!
in my mind i can still hear them saying, blood is thicker than water, over and over again. yes,...........it might be true in some ways, but all those folks that they were referring to as water. those are the ones that i call my true family. those are the ones that i was raised with, and have always loved me, even when i wasn't lovable. the ones that never turned their back on me, even when i turned mine on them.  in my book a little disrespect goes a long way also, and to disrespect those that i love goes the farthest!!

just so you will know, i don't have any hard feeling against my mother or father. things just happen in all of our families. there is always a black sheep in a family. daddy was the one in his, and as far as i can tell, mother was in hers. i know that i personally have the one in mine wrapped up.
we all make mistakes, and we all have things handed down out of our control. we all have things that we regret doing on the way in life. if you never made a mistake then you have never done anything at all, and ha!!,...........that was a mistake to begin with!!
i think that the key to my life, and hopefully somebody else can relate to this is the fact that we can't take ourselves to seriously. we need to learn to love, and laugh along our journey. we need to be quick to forgive others, because that makes it so much easier to forgive ourselves. if we want true friends then we have to be a true friend to others. invest in the life's of others richly, and you will always get a great return in the time of your darkest moments.
i guess that i have proven a valid point though. blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than all!!