this and that

There is something so touching about compassion. When there is compassion.. true, genuine compassion, it just makes me cry. Makes me just want to vomit out all these words and feelings. I am just some touched some days.

We went to my (a) parents house for Thanksgiving. I ate too much, but I did wear my fat jeans so I could , and be comfortable. I looked frumpy, but I was comfortable:)
That day, my (a) mom made this statement:" I am just so thankful to have you two girls. My life would be so empty if I hadn't adopted you."

oh boy.

I love my mom. I truly do-I just don't feel her compassion. I talked to her on the phone for the first time since July a couple weeks ago. She asked how I was doing.. I got out half a sentence and she replied "That's nice, you should see the wood floors daddy is working on." (then why the F did you ask? I'm drowning over here.)
Every single time I go to my parents house, I end up looking at picture albums from when I was a baby. I've ALWAYS been drawn to them. This time was no different, but my perspective was.

I've always had in my mind's eye what I looked like as a baby. This was the first time I've seen the pictures, though, since I found out about my Betsy. I looked at myself the other day as Betsy's daughter-and I looked different than how I remember myself looking. I searched my face, remembering the picture of my sister, Carla, as a baby.. Remembering where my mother and family was during those years when I was away from them. It just made me really sad.

I'm still really sad. Compassion makes me cry. I am not worthy.
Thanksgiving came and went.. The quiet screamed in my ears all day. This search was more important to me.. I get it.
I just want to matter. I want to matter to them, to my parents, to myself.
oh, Fork in the Road, which way will you lead me?


Oh, and this is my current favorite.. take a gander.. what a beautiful, heart-wrenching, gut-mangling writer my friend Ms. M is. She gets it. I hate that she has to get it, but she gets it. <3



http://marginalperspectives.blogspot.com/

why i feel the need, not really sure.

I've gotten some interesting feedback from my last post. Maybe I do not write as coherently as I like to believe, or maybe we just interpret things according to our role , our journey, our story.

Whatever the case may be, I'd like to clear it up once and for all, and then move on.

My post was directed at fellow adoptees who have searched, found, and were rejected before seeing, talking, meeting.. rejection BEFORE they were given a chance. I call it the 2nd rejection, but I'm sure there is a more PC term for this somewhere. People will probably argue with me about my choice in calling it a second rejection, in the fact that there are, indeed, mothers who didn't reject , per se` the first time. Surrendered. I can live with that. Surrendering not really being a choice, but laying it all down because you truly have no other options.

As sad as it is to say, there are some mothers who actually DID have a choice. They weren't shackled, coerced, knocked out cold. They made the decision to voluntarily give their baby up for whatever reason. We all wish that wasn't the case, but sadly, it is a reality many live with.

In saying that, there are many mothers that I know and love personally that had zero choice. They were coerced, tied down, shackled, drugged up, pillows over their faces. I get it, and it hurts my heart. Those are the mothers we would all love to find.

Anyway, pardon all my prefaces. My point to my last post was this: Option A) 2nd rejection. Option B) finding your mother had already passed, thus, keeping hope that maybe she wasn't one of the ones who wouldn't reject. That's all. No other scenarios, options. Just those two.

Of COURSE I wish my mother was not dead. My comparison was not to mothers who wanted their children very much, or that I hated my mother and wished her harm.. quite the opposite, actually. I wanted her alive.. I wanted to see her, feel her, touch her, know her. Of course I know there are a million different scenarios, because of a million different stories. My post was DIRECTLY at the adoptees who have it worse than I do. Who have pain and heartache because their mothers have been cruel and not one ounce of compassion.

I know we ALL have pain. I wasn't taking away from anyone's pain. I was simply comparing 2 and only 2 scenarios. I was also supporting my friends, I know their hearts, I see it everyday. I do have sympathy, it's all I can give. Just like they can only give me sympathy, as we cannot empathize with each other's plights. While our journeys mirror each others, our endings do not.

That's it.

i hate to say this.. but..

I've been reading some blogs by other adoptees.. I do it often, so it's not really random. At the beginning of my search, I thank the gods that I found the community founded by the fabulous Elaine P. when I did. Christ on a crutch, I don't know how I'd be right now had I not stumbled onto that page.
Anyway, this isn't going to be a long blog, the time change makes me want to go to bed at 4.30, so you can imagine how I feel at 7.08.. but I've come to a giant conclusion-it was something I had supposed was true, but now I feel it's absolutely true, not just a theory. Please feel free to chime in-I'd love to hear perspective either way.

I feel, as a grownup who was adopted as a baby, searched for her mother, only to find her ashes are scattered in the Gulf of Mexico and I will never ever know her.. that it would be easier to find a mother already dead, than to be rejected again.
I understand.. maybe, perhaps.. that there COULD be hope if the mother is still alive and on the planet.. but I will swear that I doubt that's the case.. not for me, anyway.. I've got the wound.. it's shredded me.. I honestly don't know if I would have the fortitude some of the adoptees I admire have.

I know life, in general, is putting one foot in front of the other--to keep going.. when the going gets tough and all that crap.. so ,another cliche, we do what we have to do, and it is what it is.
My sadness these days is pure grief.. the what could have been.. the questions, unanswered. The wishing, the wanting.. all of those plus more, I have, and they have annihilated me. I know I will stand again, but for my comrades, the ones who have lost the hope, have had the second rejection.. you're on my mind and heart tonight. I'm just so sorry.

So, this is to you, the ones who have found, and have had the knives pushed in even further. It quite possibly could even be worse than the first wound, I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that is the case.
You have my respect, and my sympathy.. I just wish we all could have gotten lucky to have found living, breathing mothers that wanted us, still.
I really, really ache for you, my sisters, my friends, my allies in a war we never asked to be in.

a month from yesterday

my birthday is on december 9th. i just noticed on my little calendar icon the date. where have i been for the past few months? where..did..the time go?

I will be 38 years old in a month from yesterday.
It will be my very first birthday, where I'll know she's not thinking of me. No more wondering as I have for at least.. oh.. 34 years.
she died at 54-ive seriously got to change my lifestyle so i dont succumb. or.. not.

sunny sag, where are you? come..back soon.

dazed.

dazed, confused, im just waking up--literally, figuratively. coma is a good word.. putting one foot in front of the other, existing, mourning, laughing, loving, hating, missing you, missing her, missing me.

the grief process has been interesting, grieving for someone you never knew is hard to explain to people who just won't get it.. but they can't.. but i still blame them, somehow. or, maybe i did know her very well.. i feel, even though i never had a conversation with her, that our hearts were connected.. on some biological level, i know exactly how she felt.. or maybe its only because i inherited her depression. i have no idea.

i'll never know the entire story. there is still that storage shed in galveston, dusty, dark, alone.. quiet.. screaming with my mother's secrets, entombed are all her earthly possessions-locked down like the secret of me has always been. is there no one who knows? does anyone care? i do.

i think ive put her safely into a good place in my heart. the last contact i had with the eldest of my sibs was in the form of a box, pictures, my mothers ring.. bracelet, a charm. in case of fire, get these things.. i keep telling myself, hoping i'll remember. her sock monkey when she was a baby. the tail still holding on to the shape that looks like she sucked on it.. or held on to it for comfort.. my mother's little sock monkey. profound. it helped. a lot.

that was kind of her, my sister. it really was. this abandoned adoptee is grateful for that.

still not so grateful to be sitting out here wondering who my father is/was. wondering how i fit these people that i just pushed my way through to get to so that one random monday, their lives were changed, as well. push and pull. maybe ill always have that piece played on my gameboard. i want to get it out of my head-i want to be looked for. ive done the looking, the searching, the hoping , the praying, the hard work. . so now i sit. it was more important to find than to be found. im tired. exhausted, really.
i see the dark place ive found, once again. this time, its a little different.. i hate it here. i hate being lost. i hate not finding the sun. turn on the lights so i can find the doorknob and get out of here. i want to live now, please,and thank you. with you, without you, i dont care, i just have to live.
or i die.

just go

hello, old friend.. anxiety. how i havent missed you, but you're back. you creeped up the driveway, crawled into my soul, right where you love to be, at any given moment. im no longer strong. i must be weak. for today. for yesterday and the day before and tomorrow and the week after.
im angry, its oozing, i dont trust you, i dont trust me. you wake me up in the middle of the night, if you let me sleep at all. im exhausted, im tired, im sick . i called you a friend, i lied. im pushing him away because youre here, you know that, right? either way, though, im going. i decided that at the witching hour last night, it got me out of bed, made some plans. i dont think he is going to stay. i feel in the depths of the quagmire that is me, encompassing me, that he is already on his way out. so i help him out, in my own incessantly annoying way..til he hates me. they always end up hating me. and i just sit, and i make it worse. i dont trust you, and i dont trust him. im dangerously close to knowing his secrets, why do i want to know so bad? will it give me a reason to hate him so walking away would be easier? would that be easier, to be without? seems these days it might be. im as tired if not more. he fails to see me. i fail to not see him

Well, I did it. Last week I got rid of my facebook. Ridiculous. I'm running away. Metaphorically speaking of course.. perhaps something literal in there,too, as I just cut ties with people that matter. Or, should matter.

After I found out I had lost the hope of meeting my mother, I suppose what kept me from going and getting in my bed, taking a lot of pills, and sleeping most of the rest of my life away was the fact that I found out I had siblings. In this quagmire I had found myself in, there were the tree limbs reaching out over the dark pit, holding out their lacy fingers covered in bark to save me. I grabbed on, and won't let go unless they need me to. I can't beg anyone to ever want me again. I want to matter, but I can't force myself to matter.