Things just aren’t the same.

It started when life knocked my rose tinted glasses clean off my freckled face, exposing my green eyes to the world, and I realized they didn’t love me the same as their other daughters. I always told myself I kept the glasses on because my eyes don’t match with theirs. Without the glasses I saw clearly the differences in our upbringing, nothing alike yet somehow the same, it was like waking from a dream. I’m ashamed to tell you just how long I wore those glasses. Doesn’t really matter though.

It got worse when I found out by accident that she’d lied to me. The man on my birth certificate, the man who’s attention my young self begged for once upon a time, wasn’t my father. She’d never planned to tell me, even pretended she didn’t know. I can always tell, when someone isn’t being honest with themselves. “Are you surprised?” echos through my mind when I think about it, as if she’d just thrown me a birthday party. Of course, this revelation became all about her and how it impacted my step father, whom she had also never told.

Things just aren’t the same.

I found out he always knew about me, my real bio dad. He took pride in his hippie days and all of the seeds he’d planted throughout. I was just another trophy on a shelf for him and every postive attribute I possess is his gift to me. My high intelligence, my perseverance, my ability to adapt and survive a shitty childhood, you’re welcome. For he sees the demons, didn’t I know? Too busy saving the world from them (saving us all in truth and shouldn’t we be grateful) to be a father. Some of the seeds were watered by him over the years, not me of course, but I am heartier and stronger because I had to adapt in a world not made for people like us. I was left out in the cold, an experiment to observe, will she thrive or wither? I am the most like him (his greatest compliment) because I had to fend for myself and shouldn’t I be thankful?

Things just aren’t the same.

When you discover it’s all a lie,

the sad little pieces of love gathered close over the years aren’t real,

a heart covered in little paper mache IOU’s with no intrinsic value.

Things just aren’t the same.