Thin Lines

It's insanity-inducing to try to understand something that will never be clarified, never be straightforward.

I read the stories of the transracial adoptees, or the international adoptees, most of whom were abducted, or stolen.

I read the stories of first mothers: some who loved their babies more than anything and were too young to keep them. Some who were single in the 60's and were pressured, either by self or family, into relinquishing. I see the fighting between mothers who insist that they are victims, and adoptees be damned, and those mothers willing to stand by our sides, by contrast. I constantly read, "stolen, stolen, stolen, stolen, coerced, coerced, coerced."

This was not my story. I am the outlier, as always.

I read the stories of the new(ish) first mothers, and some of their stories break my heart. They write of their own feeling that they wanted the baby, but NOT LIKE THIS. As in not being married, not having the man there. So heartbreaking. It takes a *man* by your side to raise a baby still, for some people. And reading those words make me both furious and deeply sad. I am furious that a woman in her late 20's cannot keep a child. Or an engaged woman. Or a forty-year-old woman with other children. Their reasons all seem so flimsy to me, mostly about protecting themselves and THEIR images, not about the child at all. Maybe their children will forgive them. Maybe not. Those are their stories. We shall read them in twenty plus years. There are some stories where I feel like it might be okay for the child, who is my main interest, after all. Isn't adoption supposed to be about finding homes for the *children* and making sure that they're okay? Not about starting over? What bullshit.

I have a friend who got pregnant and had a child at 19. Kept her. KEPT HER. In 1997. Went on public assistance, got help: even when her parents weren't thrilled. She was NOT giving up her daughter. When I asked why adoption wasn't an option for her, she told me that the thought never entered her mind, even though she was white and middle-class. Now my friend is married and employed and has two other children. She has two degrees. She works a high-powered job. I cannot tell you how much I respect her, and how much I love her daughter, who has never had to suffer with "I don't know where I come from."

Digression.

I read stories of adoptees who are loved by and have amazing connections with their nfamilies. This was not my experience.

I look like my families, but I am not like them. I am an alien among them. For some of my relatives my difference is a liability; others are proud of me. As someone wrote recently in one of my support groups, many adoptees end up feeling neither fish nor fowl. Who knows what I am? I never will. That was the path I, and all adoptees, were damned to follow. Some of us love our paths, others find them rockier, some negotiate them with ease. I saw Man of Steel last night, and I feel like Clark did, when overwhelmed as a child with too much information. TOO MUCH. I want to know, don't get me wrong. It's just that I haven't come to terms yet with being thrown on this path, and being pretty much alone.

Then there are the lies. Some mothers tell their children right away who their fathers were, and about the circumstances of their conception. No, not my story, either.

Truthfully, I feel like a huge science experiment. Nature, nurture. Certainly some parts of me are nurture; my experiences and education have made a large part of who I am. On the other hand, my temperament, and my anxieties, and my depression, and my clotting: that's nature. I look like my father, but he was taken from the Earth long ago. From what I understand, a large part of me came from him, but I am clawing at an impenetrable wall. I will never get through to him, only around him, to memories, and only so far as others give me access.

My dear friend Katie told me the other day that part of my problems are that my wounds are so deep. She witnessed me let the MDs have it on rounds at the hospital, and she said it was powerful, but the emotion behind it was volcanic. I was triggered and felt out of control. She told me that my brain works so fast, and that I am a perfectionist. That the world rubs me the wrong way most of the time, which is true. I get extremely frustrated when people don't live up to my high expectations (which I hold myself to, as well). It doesn't matter when it's small things, but when it's big things (such as being in the hospital, or being ignored by rude people, or trying to take care of a patient at work who is being ignored), it is painful. Beyond painful.

I am privileged, I know. I found my families.

I am not a love child. Fine. I dealt with that already, at least sort of.

But the sensitivity I have: when I witness emotional carelessness, a cavalier way of treating others and their feelings, especially when it feels like life and death (which the heparin was to me in the hospital), it releases all the pain from deep, deep, deep inside. It is a power, but also a liability.

I wept for my father-in-law, who wasn't invited to my brother-in-law's home for any part of Christmas, even though he lives 40 minutes away from him. My father-in-law is 89 years old, and while he says off-the-wall things sometimes, he is family. I was furious to hear this. He was abandoned. We are inviting him here. I am sure he'll refuse, but I want him to know he's wanted. Feeling that you don't belong is terribly hurtful. I vowed not to return to Germany, but I will go to protect him. And that's saying something.

I am looking forward to working on why I feel like being ignored or left is like death. It's not rocket science to figure out *why* I have this visceral reaction, but I need to work through it.

Too many people who don't matter have too much power over my happiness, when I can plainly see how dysfunctional the situations are, and that rationally I don't even want to engage.

I have to learn to LIVE MY OWN STORY. What do I want it to be?