It’s one of the hardest things in the world for me to do. Somewhere along the line it just got easier to leave things behind me and focus on just what affects me day by day. I haven’t talked to my birth family in more than a year, with the possible exception of my brother, if only to talk to him about his son who is having epilepsy. He’s the third one in our family to develop seizures, although he is the youngest. I was the first, and they went away in my twenties. Our cousin had adult onset, which pretty much never goes away like the juvenile kind. I may be remembering that wrong, too, it may have been more than a year ago.

I haven’t talked to J or Viv since I got back from visiting them. I don’t know why, like all the other things, I just don’t want to. Maybe I feel betrayed by their leaving (although I agree with their reasons). Maybe it’s just easier to let it go — although I feel bad about it, pretty much daily. I did the same pretty much to my high school friends after I moved to Charlotte — they don’t even have a valid email or phone or address for me (although I probably do for them).

I can’t blame any of the people I’m talking about — most of them have contacted me multiple times, and I just haven’t followed up or followed through. I am realizing I’m really bad at this, largely because I have one friend who refuses to give up. Kit writes me every day. I often think about writing her first thing in the morning, and sometimes I actually do, but I get an email from her pretty much every business day. And I respond and we “chat” via email.

Today, I wrote an email to Denny, my editor way back when. (He edited Body Double, for example.) He re-found me when I posted the first of the Girl #16180 stories to ASSM (he’s a moderator there). He commented here and… I never responded. I didn’t know how to; I was embarrassed and confused by it. I finally got around to writing him today. I’ve tried to make posts to the newsgroup, but they aren’t the same — they aren’t personal at all, and I know that.

He may not respond, and that’s okay –I’d guess I deserve that. And maybe he will, and we’ll find something to talk about. I don’t need an editor anymore — I’m barely writing as it is, and Girl, with occasional help from SexyWife, do a good job on the stories, I think.

I hope I can get over it. I don’t like not talking to J and Viv. I’m at a point where I don’t know if I care about contacting my birth family anymore. I never felt really close to them after I lived with them as an adult, and some of the things that happened after I moved to Charlotte kind of cemented that in. Unfortunately, I think it was mostly my Dad doing those things, and now Mom and my Grandfather, and my brother are paying for it. It does bother me, but it still feels too hard.

I dunno why so angsty today, I had a great weekend. Maybe it’s just that I feel good enough to try some things that are hard.