Many years ago, due to a very sad series of events, I lost touch with my sister, Mandy. She wasn’t more than a few years old, and I was barely legal to drink in all of North America. I got married young, moved away, went to university, graduated from university, moved further away, had a child, then started a career. Yes, it was in that order, and it all happened between 1999 and 2002.
In that time, I lost touch with my father’s daughter (my sister). As it turns out, he decided his days as a father were over, so he abandoned his little girl, leaving Mandy with her mother. Recently, I was able to find Mandy’s mother, Natasha. I was eager to connect with Mandy again, even though we haven’t seen each other in 14 years. To her, I wouldn’t even be a memory, only a stranger that she has heard about once in a while.
It saddens me that I let this time pass, but I’m not the kind of person to keep regrets. I’m the kind of person to fix the mistakes of my past. Although I let my father bully me into not seeing Mandy for all these years, deep down, I feel that it’s my fault. I’ve always known that my father is a bad person. I knew he had his best interests in mind, but I kept doing what he said.
From this experience, I now know that regardless of the cost, regardless of what I could lose, there are certain things that aren’t negotiable in life. A relationship with my sister is not negotiable. It had to exist. If I lost my father because of it, that would be his fault. Now, I’m struggling to start a relationship with my sister, and my father stopped talking to me years ago because he got everything he wanted from me.