It's 2:40 p.m. and...

still no calls, emails, any sort of acknowledgment from my mother.

Well I guess I shouldn't have expected it, but, oh well.

Happy birthday to me.

Adoption Sucks and I am Afraid of My Own Mother

I spent the better part of Tuesday writing, deleting, and rewriting the same damn email to my mother.

All I really want is to see her; but do you think I can bring myself to ask for that?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Riiiiiiiigggggggght.

I am an adoptee who is afraid of her own mother. Is that not the most pathetic, moronic, idiotic thing you've read in the adoption-blog land? I think it probably has to be, for me, and I am a bit ashamed of myself for even writing it.

It is so hard for me to even send her a simple email to say, Hey Ma, what are you doing for the 4th? Are you going to be around? Can we maybe get together, do lunch, take the kids to the zoo?

For most normal people, this would be second nature, they wouldn't even put any thought into typing the words and hitting send (or picking up the phone and asking) but for me, this is an agonizing process, sometimes taking WEEKS to compose the words, figuring out how to not make them sound too needy, or demanding, or if I'm asking too much of her too soon.

I obsess over this and go through our past emails and figure out who emailed who last, and how long ago, because I don't want to do too much, I do not want to rush things this time around. I over-analyze and calculate and when all is set and ready and looking just-so, I delete it.

I am so full of self-doubt and fear that this relationship could crumble that I sit back and do nothing. I am frozen. I don't trust myself, I don't trust HER, I don't trust this relationship.

And really, why should I? She walked away from me not once, but twice. The very first birthday we had together, the original one, I was left all alone in a sterile hospital, crying for my mother.

The next birthday we had together 24 years later, she left me again, calling me on the phone to tell me she doesn't have time for me in her life.

She tells me she loves me, but I have a hard time believing it. I just don't buy it. I WANT to believe it, I WANT to feel those words and know that what she says is true, but some part of me just doubts it to my core.

I don't trust her, and I don't trust us.

Not yet.

And with birthday number 35 coming up, will the cycle continue?

I want to ask her if we can spend some time together on or around that day. But that scares me more than anything. Will she turn me down? Walk away from me again? I think just being turned down will be more painful than not doing anything and sitting here longing for her.

And, god, I am all grown up and still longing for my mother like a little kid.

How screwed up is that.

Adoption sucks, and I am afraid of my mother. Afraid of losing her, again, for the third time. Because if it happens again, there will be no more chances, of that I am sure.

I have a picture I keep on my computer here at work. Gran sent it to me,
about a year ago, it's a picture of her, her nephew, and her son. It was
one of the last pictures to be taken of my father before he died, and in it he
looked happy. Genuinely, positively, happy.

For a short while after his passing she sent me quite a few pictures. It's funny in a way, because before he died, I couldn't pry anything out of her about him...not a word, not a single photograph, not a peep. She was silent as a stone where he was concerned. I think in her grief, reaching out to me was a way to somehow connect with her lost son...I don't know. But if she only knew just how much of her boy was in his long lost daughter, she'd be amazed. It amazes me every time I find out more about him.

Your words to me just a whisper; your face is so unclear

I try to pay attention; your words just disappear

I don't really remember much about my father. The day we met, it's mostly all a blur to me now. I don't even remember the name of the place we were at. I remember the look on his face when we first walked in, I remember somehow ending up at a booth, I remember our hands being palm-to-palm and him remarking how much I look like my brother.

The rest? Like a videotape that has been erased, recorded over. I know he was unhappy. He was a man who's life held no joy; he had nothing and nobody. He was angry at my mother too. That was painfully obvious. Old resentments, old hurts, he still had plenty.

Cause it's always raining in my head;

forget all the things I should have
said

But it wasn't until after he passed away that winter that I really, truly got to know the man. As my Aunt stood up there and gave a truly wonderful memorial speech, I was amazed at just how much I am my father's daughter. From the little things he liked, to his dramatic personality, to his very snarky and blunt way of speaking, to his intolerance of stupid people and his hating being the center of attention and being around crowds of people. We both are cat lovers, he thought dogs are for idiots, I think my dog IS an idiot.

He was a very straight forward and no-b.s. individual. I am too...most of the time. Although I did inherit a very emotional streak from my mother, and a tendency to hide from my emotions, I will give her that. When it comes to my problems, I avoid, avoid, avoid.

Cause I can't take any more of this; I wanna come
apart

And dig myself a little hole inside your precious
heart

The whole point of this post?

I miss my father. I miss a man I never knew, never had a chance to know. I am mad at adoption, mad at death, mad at myself for never trying hard enough, never doing or saying the right things, just, never being GOOD enough.

My father drank himself to death. He was depressed, angry, and felt he had nothing left to live for. Could I have changed that? Could I have given him a reason to want to go on living? Possibly, I don't know, but could I have at least tried a little harder to be in his life?

Cause I talk to you like children, though I don't know how I
feel

But I know I'll do the right thing, if the right thing is
revealed

I could have. I SHOULD have. But I am a chicken, I am always afraid. I was afraid of him and afraid of my family. Afraid of looking like a fool, of being too pushy, of being to 'needy' or emotional or whatever. I doubted myself to the nth degree. And still I do, even with my mother. I am the biggest wuss you'll ever meet.

I'm so sorry, father, for not being there for you. I wish so much that I could have done something, anything, to let you know what you mean to me. Maybe you didn't know it but you were loved, you still are.

Just too bad it has to be by your inadequate daughter.

More Religious Adoption Spew

This individual (who is presumptuous enough to call herself the "Third Eve"...heresy, anyone?) stopped by Irish's blog and left a rather idiotic and completely rude comment the other day.

Of course, I had to check out HER blog to see just what place she was coming from, and just as I suspected, it was filled with bible quotes and pretty pictures of angelic children. Ahhhh, even the adoption agencies themselves would be jealous.

I mean, really. Going off on "real" mothers (hmm, inferiority complex much?) and whining about adoptees not, what, seeing the whole picture?

What is there to see?

That we were abandoned, given up to strangers, and that we have a very real, VALID, pain and anger for that?

I suppose she assumes that only "happy" adoptees are "balanced" and that us "angry" types need God, oh pity the poor unbalanced adoptee who is angry and in pain, don't we know that everyone feels pain from time to time? Pfffft.

You know I find it interesting that she starts her post off with

"a real mother will put her child’s life above her own. "

That's something that thousands of n-mothers do every day, giving up their children for adoption, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes they don't have much of a choice at all.

But she said it herself, these are the REAL mothers.

Not the ones who are waiting in the wings to snatch them up, and justify it with "God told me to".

I find it amusing that these people use scripture to try to validate themselves and their love for adoption.

Exodus 22:21-23 (New International Version)
22 "Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.

Yet thousands of "widows and orphans" are taken advantage of every day, in the name of adoption.

Jeremiah 49:11
Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives. Your widows too can trust in me."

Nope, don't see God telling you to snatch up children there.

# Deuteronomy 10:18
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.

Hmmm...seems God wants us to HELP these poor unfortunates, not help ourselves TO them, as in this passage:

# Job 24:9
The fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.

Try to justify it all you want, but adoptin' fer da Lord is nothing but hypocritical.

If you TRULY want to be Christlike, you'd be helping families stay together, not ripping them apart.

But is it safe?

I love amusement parks.

I have since I was a kid. I remember going up to the local one here, it was an annual tradition with the church youth group, and my friend Stacy and I were completely inseparable and we'd hit every roller coaster and loopy ride we could hit in as short as time possible.

Of course we'd have to be really dumb teenagers and talk in this fake Australian accent the whole time, we were pretending to be foreign exchange students, oh we were a hit with the boys (because teenage boys are the most gullible of the species and who could resist two young blondes who were supposedly from Down Under, mate?) lol.

Yeah, those were the days. Free from our parents, running wild through the park, flirting with boys, and winding up sick to our stomachs from so much junk food and thrill rides.

Ahhh, youth. I'm so glad I am all growed up and beyond that.

Did you know that every year, there are hundreds of injuries at amusement parks and traveling fairs? Maybe you know someone, probably you don't, but I'm sure we've all at least heard of them.

The 4 year old kid who died at Disney; the girl who lost her feet on the Zipper.

Did you also know that while traveling fairs and amusement parks have regulated safety regulations, the stationary parks do not? Most don't have any, while some are left to provide their own safety checks. It is kind of scary, when you think about it.

Lately there has been more attention to this, some of the injured people have been bringing this to the public eye and trying to pass stricter safety regulations on these parks and the individual rides. And I would agree that that is a good thing.

Wouldn't you?

I would think that almost all of us would agree that when you go to an amusement park, you expect that the car won't come off the track or your limbs won't be severed. Our safety should be paramount, not an afterthought.

We wouldn't tell these injured people to shut up and just get over it, because they had a "bad experience", would we?

Yet that's what thousands of adoptees are told every single day, when we try to speak up about the pain that adoption has caused us in our lives.

Yet if something was hurting your child, or ANY child, wouldn't you think that people would want to do something about it? Why does society keep burying their collective heads in the sand when it comes to this issue? Is it because, unlike those injured by amusement park rides, our injuries are emotional, and not out there where everyone can see them?

It would stand to reason that if adoption is hurting the adopted, then something is wrong with the system. Something needs to be fixed, we need better safety controls, we need stricter regulation.

But nobody is listening, and the entire adoption amusement park is still operating, unregulated, hurting and injuring adoptee after adoptee as the giant ferris wheel keeps turning and turning, collecting child after child and dropping them off into the hands of waiting adopters.

Is "family building" really more important than the health of the building blocks themselves?

Forgiveness

Jeni brought up a very interesting topic the other day on AFC, and it's had me thinking long and hard about the subject ever since. Its' about forgiveness...and how, and should, we forgive our mothers for the pain they've caused us?

Now Jeni's situation is different from mine. Her mother rejected her in a really, really bad way upon reunion. So in Jeni's case, I'd say she has a really good cause to say, hey Ma, f-you and the horse's ass you rode in on. But at the same time, holding on to that anger is not a fun way to live, and I'm not speaking FOR Jeni here, I'm speaking for myself and any adoptee who has had a hard time letting go of their anger at being relinquished, being rejected a second time, or any variation or combination of events in between.

How do we do it?

How do we forgive someone for doing us SO wrong?

I guess I've always been a forgiving person, so for me, forgiveness came easy. But I see a lot of my online adoptee friends struggle with this issue, and I've really begun to take notice.

It was this statement by Katmandu that really got me thinking:

I don't really know what it is. Sometimes when ppl say to forgive, what they seem to mean is just get over it.

I mean, wow. What exactly IS forgiveness, really? What does it really mean? Is it as she said...to just get over it? Like we as adoptees have heard, over and over, our entire lives?

That gave me reason to pause.

When my mother called me on my birthday, a year into reunion, and told me she didn't have time for me in her life, I was hurt. Hurt, and in time I became angry. I couldn't accept that she would DO that to me. It was a horrible feeling...of having a mother I loved so much and wanted so desparately in my life yet I had no recourse, no possible way to resolve this. She was just gone and it was her choice, I was left to deal with these feelings of love, loss, longing, and unmet needs from my childhood, and it was like someone holding my head under the water and I could not draw breath. That is how it felt for a very, very long time.

How could I forgive her for doing this to me?

And what would that mean for me...would I just get over it? How does someone just get over that? CAN they?

I suppose for me, it was easier. I knew that she also loved me, and that her reasons were emotional ones. For adoptees like Jeni, the reasons are less clear. Her mother hasn't given her any reason to think that there is guilt or love on her end.

So I am struggling with this. What does it really mean to forgive. I think I take it for granted to know "how" to forgive, but what does it really entail? I couldn't begin to tell someone like Jeni how to do it, how to reach a place of forgiveness.

But I know that for me, personally, living with a lot of anger inside is like living with a dangerous toxin in my veins. I can't be myself, at least not a good version of me. I HAVE to forgive in order to protect who I am and those I love around me, or I become a very bad version of Lillie.

If it's not "getting over it", is it acceptance? Acceptance that the person who wronged us will not change, and that we can never do anything to change the situation? Is it saying, "Ok, you did this, and I'm not going to let it affect me anymore"?

But how do you NOT let it affect you when, for Jeni, it affects her SO much?

This is so hard.

Adoption is so hard.

I wish there were easy answers, I wish I could find the answer for her, and for so many adoptees in her situation.

Just how does an adoptee forgive?

She Was Stolen

Can you help this adoptee?

Please, take a few minutes to watch this youtube video, and then the second part which is also included on her site.

If anyone, ANYONE, has any information which might help her figure out who she is or where she came from, PLEASE help her.

I couldn't imagine a more horrible fate for any one of us adoptees than to be literally stolen from your family, your homeland, and given away into adoption with absolutely NO way to find out about your true identity.

If enough people see this, perhaps the right person will be able to help this girl.