“My issues, they got the best of me, lad” I say to nobody in particular. Wandering aimlessly through the halls of my mind, I wonder whether I am trying to be funny or simply marginalizing the magnitude of my hurt. Guess it doesn’t matter.

When I think about it, her, us, I realize that I can’t. Not yet. I lack the capacity to think. I am heroin. Not that I am ON heroin, mind you. No, never. I AM heroin, numbing myself to the sheer shittiness of my current situation. Fuck heroin.

She was the underlying theme of my past two years. Each life event subtly tainted by her, us. For instance, Park City in the summer. Well, a resort outside Park City. Nice. I was having lunch with Bio Dad. I remember that it felt strangely natural for having been the second or third time I had seen him in 27 years. We had talked on the phone of course, but even that was fairly minimal and fairly brief. What was more intriguing, more intellectually challenging, was the fact that here I was at a family reunion of roughly 50 people, most of whom I had never met, all of them claiming to be my relations, and I was feeling at home. Sally of course greased the skids, as she always does. And even Sara made things easier. They took to her immediately and in a way my parents never would. It all makes sense, after all; that was the reason I went in search of Bio Dad. I had assumed that the half of me that I was both terrified of and madly in love with was his contribution. He was my electricity. She, Mom, was the issue-giver. He was a junkie, she was Jewish.

But fuck me. Meeting an entirely new family, all of who were showering us with warmth, was huge. Conflicting self-inquiries fired like pistons, rhythmically lulling me into a panacea of “Who the fuck was I?”s and “what the fuck is this dark side underlying my life when they all seem so warm”s. Was it Mom? Were Mom’s candy bars of guilt and stuffed animals of inadequacy the underbelly of my essence? All this time I thought my depravities were his. Huh. Well, no matter, because Bio Dad’s disappearing act into vials of pills, the federal pen, and cigarette-smoking-12-steppers blessed me with lightening-quick addiction problems of my own. Fuck.

So anyway, back to Park City. He and I were sitting there, late afternoon, the restaurant in the nether regions of the post-lunch, pre-dinner blues. As I explain the situation (the same bloody situation I had been dealing with for a year), I want to say “So there ya go, Dad. Thanks for fucking me up this badly, ya prick.” I am sure that I was looking to make him feel guilty (thanks Mom, ya bitch) just as much as I was looking to sit at the feet of what I was hoping was my swami. It dawned on me that as I was recounting my exploits of breaking up marriages and laying carnage in the path of whoever came before me, I didn’t need to tell him how awful that was.

“Well, Alex...uh...I’m sorry to hear all that. In recovery we get pretty good at spotting addiction, and what you are describing to me sounds an awful lot like that.” Yeah. No shit. Obsession. Addiction. Yeah. I get it. But what the fuck do I do? And that was it. There was no more. No “So this is what you do. You end it right now and get on with your life.”

“Oh, and I’m gay.” Maybe not quite like that, but pretty damn close. “Uh. Ok.” Maybe not quite like that, but pretty damn close.

I knew anyway, or at least had a pretty damn good idea. Not that I would have guessed or anything, but when I saw my cousin Jeremy, (roughly my age and he being one of the few memories I have of family), the year before, he made a comment. We were discussing how his family took to not only his being gay, but having sperm-donored? sperm-donated? to the call of triplets. He said something to the effect of “Well, they’ve all been so good with your Dad.” I suppose he could have meant because of his fucked-up life in general, but I knew. It made sense. It felt right.

And there it was again- the feeling of sliding a key in the lock. Sally putting the Z in the Spider Man alphabet puzzle. Completeness. Wholeness. It was the most natural conversation in the world for all of its impromptu arrival and lackadaisical response. I showed just the right amount of progressive matter-of-factness, tinged with just a hint of “I’m with ya, brother” radicalness, all wrapped up in an empathetic recognition of the struggle. It did bring us closer together. And I sat and wondered, as the words echoed through the chambers of my brain, why my feeling and my thinking always had to be so disassociated. If I thought about it, I would be swallowed by the scale of what I was hearing, what implications it had for me. But if I just felt, it was…right.

That night was the big dinner when all of us were assembled at the swanky restaurant rented out by some of the more lucrative Feldsteins, the more prosperous Brillmans, the fat cat Steins. It was family and it was nice. Not “I never want to leave these people” nice, but nice. After all, they were still family; blood and common ancestry do something rotten to a person. But as far as families go, there I was with several convicts, a few addicts, some exceedingly rich folks, at least three gay men, and an unknown number of lesbians, and it was nice. Beat the shit outta a night with the reich-like Silvermans.

The plane rides home were uneventful. Sally was rock-solid, bless her beautiful heart. There is just nothing worse than the agony of flying with a child. Except my current situation.