Probable Cause of Hopelessness #11

After my parents had divorced, my father remarried. Within a year or two, he and his new wife adopted two girls, sisters, from El Salvador. Then a little later they adopted a Mexican-American boy from Texas. After that, without even telling me, they adopted another boy from the Dominican Republic. They celebrated Christmas, an alien holiday to me and my brother and sister, and they went to church. My father, who had never spent much time with us since leaving, was occupied with his new family. After my mother died, he did make an effort to fulfill parental duties at critical times: weddings, graduations and such. But his family was not a part of mine, and never felt like it no matter how much time has passed. So now, so many years later, I still feel the sting of rejection; it still feels like my brother, sister and I were not enough, and that perhaps we remind him just too much of my mother, whom he clearly hated.