I am taking a post to vent. Not about my past or about the things I worry about in the future, but about life now. This post may seem a bit contradictory to my last post, but it isn’t. Both the feelings and beliefs that I state in this post AND the ones I acknowledged in the last are true, however painful the truth may be. I just want to be sure and state at the beginning that I love this family that I live with and I am SO thankful for what they sacrifice for me. Also, I truly view them as my family. But there is half of me that just wants to scream at the world, “ADOPTION SUCKS!” Horrible, I know… and I can’t even believe I am actually writing about this on my blog, especially when there are so many other happy things that I could be talking about, but I just couldn’t get it off my mind… and I feel like sometimes it’s ok to share reality with others.
Just this morning my mom and I were discussing why it is that I can’t just be content, to the very core of who I am, to view this as my home. Because, to be honest, most days this feels like living with a really nice family for a while, and for ages it has plagued me as to why I couldn’t just make myself feel loved and tucked into a secure family setting. Even now I am at an utter loss as to how I can still yearn so ferociously to actually believe that my mother loves me as her own after all the time and energy she has dumped into me in just the short time I have been here. Yet, for whatever reason, I cannot accept that love.
After we had finished our conversation this morning, my mom scooped up her baby boy (Eli) who was having some sort of issue and began to care for him as any loving mother would, and I began to watch a common thing in our house: a child being loved. It went something like this:
“Oh baby boy, someday I am actually going to miss these fits of yours, and I’ll say to myself, ‘remember when Eli would throw ridiculous tantrums that could simply be laughed at?’” After some smiles and hugs and kisses and warm gushy feelings, the inevitable reminiscing began:
“And you just used to be the fattest thing, with all the chubs, look at yourself in that picture; you were only two months old… and soooo little! You were born all skinny, but you just fattened right up because you were the best nurser there. All the nurses were so proud! You just came right out and latched right on like you had been doing it for ages. And you pooped and peed like a pro… all the nurses were so proud, you were just the best baby in the whole hospital, especially because you didn’t even lose any weight, not even an ounce. Your sister Katie lost a whole pound (or something like that)….” And on and on it goes, from one kid to the next, how they did this when they were just a toddler, or how baby-ish Tommi was when he came home and just how big he and Z-man are now. Or even the bad things, how hard it was when someone used to do this or that.
The worst is when we sometimes look through old pictures on the computer:
“Oh look how skinny Z was!”
“I remember that day… it was such a wonderful summer.”
“Oh and there is that skirt that Jordan
“Look at little Alli… man she was such a baby girl!”
“And Dan… see those tears running down his cheeks? He was always crying about something.”
“Look how beautiful my Katie Lady is… man she is so grown up… can you believe how big she is?”
“Gosh what a runt Tom is… ah but he was so cute, look at his big adorable eyes… he was such a baby!”
I am by no means saying that I wish my mom would never reminisce about the years gone by, or cuddled up the little ones and oogle over them and how wonderful they were when they were younger. In fact, it is probably good for me to watch how a mother is supposed to love her children, and there are days when it brings a smile to my face. But it hit me so hard today why I can’t settle; why I hate watching this interaction so much: it’s because I have no history here.
My mother has no idea how I ate when I was born, or whether or not I pooped or peed well. Actually, she was 11 when that happened, and can’t even comprehend how she would have been my mother when I was born… because she couldn’t have been. She has no idea how I acted, the toys I loved most and all the ordinary stuff that mothers know about their children when they are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. We have missed so many years… and I am supposed to be home?
This is my no means the first time that I have struggled with this, or been saddened by the fact, but I somehow find a way to get beyond it… as I will today. I choose to be thankful for the time I have now… and try and learn how to love my family, while they are almost strangers to me. I love them fiercely, and that is why it hurts. But alas, one can’t get hung up on the “what if’s” of life. Sorry if this post came across as wining… it probably was to a certain extent… but I just had to get these thoughts out of my head. And don’t be mistaken, my mother is wonderful… so very wonderful. And I know, somewhere deep down inside, that she really does love me.
