Oh, the lost subtleties

Irritation. It's one of those annoying, chafing, totally distracting things. It's hard to put off, although I wish to heaven I could.

Why do people persist in being so willfully tone deaf? I have seen my friend Joy go through the emotional wringer this past week, and we've had conversations about how the opinions of some adoptees, no matter how they're couched, get swatted away like flies. And other people just don't get it when we speak out in defense of ourselves. They don't. I wonder if they don't care (probably), if they get thrills from being nasty (probably), or if they're just plain unable to understand what we say in plain English (probably).

First, there was a post on another blog. A young first mother is dealing with having placed her son. I feel for her. It must be devastating. I am glad that she wants dialogue with all kinds of adoptees, even the ones who aren't happy-go-lucky and prosaic about it all. I applaud her for taking a broad view. And yet there are commenters who are quick to tell her not to listen to "angsty" female adoptees, who skew the narrative and aren't as well adjusted as the males. Whatever that means.

Joy pointed out to me the different between Angst, a Germanic word that translates into English as "fear" among other things, and "angsty," which is an English derivative word that has the following, more insidious meaning in slang:

"What a lot of teenagers tend to be at times. Generally it involves the feeling of not being understood by anyone and that the person is alone in the world. When in reality about a million other people are feeling the same thing." (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=angsty)


There is clearly a huge difference between straight up "fear" and the immature, self-involved navel-gazing suggested by "angsty." The former suggests an acknowedged emotion, the other is a put-down. The person who wrote "angsty" in relation to female adult adoptees, given the benefit of the doubt, probably didn't mean it as a put-down. I feel, however, that it merits mentioning because there are so many throwaway things said that do hurt. I, for one, like to be told when I hurt someone. I don't see why it's wrong to point out when I, or others, are hurt. 


There is, moreover, the strange component of being told that male adoptees just don't have the same issues as females (Gott Sei Dank, I suppose, for that blogger with the placed male infant). I think this is a simplistic statement based largely in gender stereotypes and the way that males are raised. I am sure that there are many men who are just fine with being adopted. Really, I believe it. But to say that most men have no issues is to pathologize those men who do have issues, and not to look closely at our culture which largely does not encourage men to speak out about their emotional experiences. In another place I spoke with adult male adoptees about this, who said that they are labled "gay" or "weak" when they do express anger, sadness, or what-have-you in relationship to being adopted. It's awful for them. See this. 


Another thing: I am sick of the adoption police saying that adoption is a one-time event. They want me to say that I "was" adopted, not that I "am" adopted. No. I was, and continue to be adopted. It's a legal process. Just like on June 26, 1999, I was married, but I am still married today. What hokum to say that such a transformative process has no lasting influence. Adoption is not a party that you go home from. It's something that is lived. And some people may not give it a second thought, but some of us do, and to tell us that we shouldn't--well, you don't have that right. Live your own life, and don't insist that your adoptee say anything except what she or he wants to about her/his experiences.


Finally, what is it with the knickers in a twist about adult adoptees wanting to be called adults, when we are? I am no longer the 10 week old that my aparents took home from the agency. I reached my majority a long ass time ago. I am not a child, and I don't want to be called a child or treated like a child. No infantilizing, no head patting, no speaking for me. Just stop. 


I shouldn't fall down this particular rabbit hole AGAIN, but I find the magnetic pull too hard. I cannot believe when people say, definitively, that separation from a caregiver is meaningless to infants who were adopted before six months of age. I argue that yes, there isn't any scientific evidence to prove that a child can communicate distress at separation before six months of age because they're not developmentally able to do so. It isn't observable, although anecdotally from my job, I would argue otherwise. I have to take infants away from their mother's breasts to get their baths, take vitals, and get their vaccinations. I am fairly universally shrieked at by the neonates when this happens. Maybe it's the cold, you say. Maybe it's the smell in the room. Maybe it's this, that, or the other: but no, it could NEVER be that the infant is put into a stressful position by being taken from his or her mother. Nope, just not possible. This seems stubbornly blind. Then do studies of neonates and find a way to eliminate variables to your pleasure! But don't say that babies don't feel anything until six months of age. They don't COMMUNICATE stress at separation in a scientifically observable way until they're six months, but it doesn't mean they don't FEEL anything. Find a more subtle way of measuring things. At least some scientists are looking at markers such as cortisol, a stress hormone, to be able to study younger infants. Why throw the baby, for real, out with the bathwater and say that such studies are meaningless? Oh yeah, behaviorists only care about behavior, not feelings. Argh. 


I agree that there is a ton of pseudoscience out there, but that doesn't mean that the way things stand, TODAY, in developmental psychology, is the way things will be forever. There is no Bible for neonatal experience, and to sit there and judge people for voicing their pain and their hypotheses is just plain cruel. What people say about neonatal separation isn't even anti-establishment. The party line states that  babies are developmentally mature enough to communicate, with words and behavior, that they are stressed about caregiver absence, at about six months of age. I know that I bonded to my aparents and did express stranger anxiety, per the protocol, at six months of age. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't have a completely different emotional experience when I was alone in the hospital for 10 weeks without a primary caregiver. It's apples and oranges. We need to find a way to study neonatal stress in a way that even the most left-brained can buy into. Maybe this is my new calling, so that I can say BOOYAH to all the non-adopted people invested in telling me I am full of shit because science says so, or because their placed or adopted kids are JUST FINE. Please stop pathologizing me and treating me like I belong in the Salem Witch Trials or in a cave in the Negev. I am neither an infant nor an idiot.


And if these subtleties, which really aren't all that subtle, don't compute for you, then maybe YOU aren't thinking hard enough about being respectful of adoptees. And yes, we deserve respect just as much as real kids do. And I mean real kids both in terms of kept kids and in terms of us not being fairy children or changelings. Or aliens. 


Edited to Add: I was looking at research papers available online that discuss neonatal stress and its measurement. Of course the most thorough studies were conducted on rats and nonhuman primates because we can't (or shouldn't) use humans for experimentation that might lead to pathology. Most of the articles included maternal separation as a variable for stress, which is interesting, given that (supposedly) the Powers That Be don't believe in maternal separation as a neonatal stressor. Why study it if we absolutely know it cannot be problematic? Hmmm. 


This particular article dicusses how maternal separation caused chemical pathology in the brains of rats and nonhuman primates that mirrors that of depression and anxiety in human adults. Worth a read. http://www.psychology.emory.edu/clinical/goodman/grahamheim1999.pdf

I speak to you with silence

I am horribly slow--as in months behind--at reading my Sunday NYT, but last week I finally got around to the edition from February 6. In the Book Review, one author opened her critique by quoting from "Dedication," a poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

You whom I could not save
Listen to me. 
Try to understand this simple speech
     as I would be ashamed of
     another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of
     words.
I speak to you with silence like a 
     cloud or a tree. 


I was introduced to Milosz's work some 18 years ago, as a newish grad student at Berkeley, where Milosz would spend part of the year as an emeritus. I went to his readings in the small Maud Fife Room in Doe Library, and sat transfixed by the eloquence of his words and the soft cadence of his voice as he read aloud. His poems often speak to damaged part of me, the part I try to keep locked up and safe.

I was unfamiliar with this particular poem, but it has resonated through me these past few days. His sense of speaking with silence is intensely meaningful to me. There are so many silences in adoption: about birth, about relationships, about what adoptees and aparents and nparents feel or don't feel. Adoption is deeply rooted in painful emotions that are buried, things that are difficult to put into words and that cause pain and controversy when voiced. It is hard for me to accept this silence. My post from last week attests to that. Trust is difficult when there aren't words of support and affirmation from those I love. I have also thought of C's silence as saying the same kinds of things that Milosz touches on in these few lines. She saved me by sacrificing me; was I really saved? She would like to think so. She doesn't mince words, and she doesn't speak unless she has something to relate. She doesn't lure or adorn with false praise. I admire her for that. And she does beg me to forgive her for the long, bitterly cold silence during which I suffered such excruciating pain from her rejection. I do, of course, forgive her.

She called me today, on her birthday, out of the blue. For the first time I was able to wish her "Happy Birthday" and have her hear me say it. She thanked me with a laugh and told me she needs eight margaritas to deal with being 64. She wanted to tell me about her trip to San Diego. For the first time she said that she feels she wants to meet me (and my children) in the not-too-distant future. She told me how happy A is that he has a sibling, at last. She told me how much A likes Mark, and how she hopes to meet him, too. She apologized for being locked in the 1960's view of herself for so long. She told me that she appreciates how I am letting her direct the course of the reunion, and that she feels safe that I am not judging her. I don't, or I try very hard not to. I love her, although I cannot tell her this yet; it suggests that the stakes are higher than she wants them to be. It is still too much, she says, to think of me as her daughter. She said she felt terrible for not being able to see me as a human being until last fall. The defensive wall has come down, she said, and she is happy for it. She cannot be happier than I am. She laughed as she told me that A told her that he, she, and I are all from the same mold: stubborn, fixated, and up to a thousand things at once. Noses buried in books, curious about everything, loyal.

She also told me that A told her that I am "scary smart" and use vocabulary words he's never heard of. I will take the compliment, but the conversation then led to A's and my discussion about the contingency of our relationship and how much I feared that contingency. I didn't want to get into the grittier parts of this equation, but she immediately said that she supported me 100% in setting boundaries and asking him to choose either to be in or to be out. As she put it, I "deserve so much more than to be kicked around by someone indecisive." I can get behind that, and I love that she gets it.

While her 11-year stony silence was brutal, she is not going faster than she feels comfortable. She is clear about what she can do and what she cannot offer. Since she committed to talking to me last December, she has kept her word. She has reached out to me at least as much as I've reached out to her. She has been more reliable than A, when I look at the big picture. I think I am really less afraid of her leaving me than of A cutting ties. I feel that she respects me, which is a very big deal. She isn't the one keeping secrets and not telling me where she is.

It is unnerving to want to trust her. It is safer to keep people at arm's length, but it is also seductive to have her draw me in closer and make herself vulnerable to me. It is wonderful to hear that I might meet her before too long, but I am of course terrified that I will break down in front of her and become a quivering mush of emotions. It's one thing to talk to her on the phone and keep myself detached, but in person? To stand in front of the woman I most look like--and from whom I was born--and be nonchalant, just like I am meeting a pen pal? I don't think my adult armor is quite strong enough to protect and mask the lost little girl inside of me who is still her daughter.

Little Things

I have been feeling tender of late, partially because it breaks my heart to hear of adoptees being frozen out by their natural families, and partially because I am back to the dangerous job of hunting my own doubts about my nfamily, the ones that hide in the shadows like wolves. Are they shadows? Are they real?

I called C last week, but she didn't return my call. It may be that she was out of town and didn't see that I'd called. It could be that she chose to ignore me. I don't know. Then on Monday I was shopping for a present for A, whose birthday is Friday. He had asked me to buy him a particular pair of sweatpants with the UC logo on them, but they were out of stock. I called his phone to see if he could give me guidelines for another pair. T answered. It seems that A leaves his phone at home while he's at the hospital because he doesn't get good reception. I spoke with her, got the information I needed, and then asked about their plans for the week. She said that they're planning a simple celebration on Friday, and that they're going to spend the weekend, sans W, in a town north of San Diego (coincidentally, very close to where my aparents live). I knew that C was flying out to babysit, but T said nothing of it. I said, "C told me that she's going to help you out by babysitting." T confirmed, but changed the subject summarily.

Why is there enforced silence? Did T not want to hurt my feelings that I am not invited? Is there some intrafamilial agreement about communication that I am not to be told about? Is C planning to exile me again? I wish I could ask her, but she's in San Diego now. I don't want to overstep boundaries by calling her there, especially given the silence stuff, and yet it pisses me off that I have to bury my questions and needs to protect those crumbs that I have (or think I have).

I also grew paranoid because usually when I call A and he's not there, he will call me back or text me. He hasn't yet. If last year hadn't happened, I would not be so freakishly concerned about it. But he threw me away before, and I am more than aware that they can do it again. Sucks. I hope I am not about to lose my new hard-won balance. I haven't quite figured out what my gut is telling me is going on. It is suspiciously silent, but perhaps that's a good thing. We will see what happens, but the waiting is also painful. Insecurity is like very slow-acting poison, although I think I have very good reason to feel insecure.

I was recently reading a memoir in which the author wrote thus about the eulogy at her father's funeral: "It seemed more likely that the vicar, a man who had known my father for thirty years, was thinking of his aching need for a love greater than any one person had been able to provide." Sometimes I wonder about myself similarly. Is what I want too much? Am I unhappy because I expect or need more than I can ever have? Can one person, or any person, give me the love I need to thrive?

Then I remember that all I am asking for is to be treated with consideration, like a human being with value who belongs and who deserves the truth. Little things that end up feeling extremely consequential when they're absent or denied.

"I love you, but..."

I read quite a few blogs that consider open adoption from the point of view of the natural parent. I find the dynamics of open adoptions interesting because my own adoption, dating from the Dark Ages of sealed records in lockdown, is so very different.

As a social worker wrote recently on a blog,

"No one should ever be denied this knowledge [of where she comes from]. I heard a quote recently (and posted it on Facebook) that closed adoption is institutionalized denial. It's so true. You can never deny a child's heritage. That's why I love open adoption so much, because I see a child with two families, two heritages, and a whole lot of love."


A whole lot of love? More self-knowledge? What ever could be wrong with that?

And yet, I have been struggling with some of what I read. An adoptee of my era commented thus about open adoption,

"This is just my personal opinion, but as an adult adoptee I have never been totally enamored with the idea of open adoption. I did not want my first parent(s) to take me to the zoo, I wanted to live with them and have them raise me. What if they would move out of town and start a new family and not see me as much or ever? Open adoption seems to me that it could potentially set the stage for repeated rejections. Just speaking for myself, I suspect I would rather have only been a part of my afamily until the age of 18 when I could decide for myself. The only advantage I can see is knowing who my natural parents were would have been better than having imaginary figures in my head. It seems that children have an innate need to be loved and valued by their natural parents. I'm not sure that open adoption would get rid of the pain of being given away in the first place."


I have thought very much the same thing, and have spent much time recently discussing this topic with other adoptee friends. 


While I think it would have been wonderful to know before I was 40 where I came from, who my nparents were, whom I resembled, etc., the pain of having nparents around, but perhaps not emotionally present, or only partially emotionally present, would have been very difficult for me. I try to imagine being taken out for ice cream, or to the zoo. Knowing that I belonged with these people, but that I wouldn't go home with them. That my kept brothers and sisters would have what I couldn't--the unconditional love of my nparents, as well as their time. It seems like each drop off would involve repeated, painful levels of rejection and sadness; at least I expect that's how my child brain and emotions would have processed it. 


I know that there are some open adoptions that "work," although they are not without their own pain and problems. Then there are those "open" adoptions that seem paradoxical. For example, when an nmom has another child she keeps after the placed child. The placed child wants one-on-one time with the nmom, but the nmom cannot imagine leaving her kept child at home because that child would feel "abandoned." Yes! I didn't make this up. The kept child's sense of abandonment matters; the adopted child's doesn't. Why is that?


Or the nmom who doesn't want to tell her kept child that this other child he meets and plays with is his brother. It's too difficult because the father of the kept child isn't quite open accepting the placed child into the family. Never mind that the placed child is told by his APs that this other child is his brother. Seems to me that the lying by omission is going to cause serious fallout, and most likely for the adoptee. What happens when the adopted child tells the kept child that they're brothers, and the kept child says, "You're lying." Who will be blamed? Who will be distanced and ostracized? I know what my guess is.


Another nmom safe havened her infant but then managed to find out who the adoptive mother was, and has worked on building an "open" adoption. Problem is, no one in the nmom's family even knows she had a child, and the nmom's fiance doesn't know, either. When will the truth be told? Will the adoptee be denied once the nmom has her own kept children? I know if I married someone who didn't tell me that he'd had a child who was adopted, I would be FURIOUS. I would have very serious trust issues with this person, and I am not altogether sure the relationship would survive. Will the child be denied when she shows up as a teen-ager, because no one in the nmom's family knows? After all, it's an "open" adoption and the child *should* feel free to contact her mom. The adoptive mother knows the nmom's name. The child *will* be able to track her nmom down. I am just imagining the pain at being told, "I love you, but not enough to tell the truth about you to anyone else who matters to me in my life."


There is another case in which the nmom is ambivalent about having the placed child in her life. Okay, fine. All parents are ambivalent from time to time. But the contrast between the gooey, expressed love for the kept child versus the coldness and emotional distance from the placed child is remarkable. I know as a child I was very much able to tell who liked me and who didn't. Perhaps her placed child is standoffish because the nmom is standoffish; interpreting the sources of adult emotions is difficult for a child. Is it a two-year-old child's job to be warm and bubbly and open so that the nmom feels good about herself, and thus open to him? Or is it his nparents' job at that point to work on building trust and love, and welcoming him into their lives? Here again is the problem of not telling the truth about this child's existence at church because right now the truth "doesn't matter." But if you have a place in a church and community, what is the likelihood that you will change your mind and tell the truth down the road? It becomes more and more difficult over time, I think. Once down that rocky road, the lies multiply. It's easy to justify not telling the truth, because *does* it really matter? Oh, the child won't know. It's about preserving one's sense of self, and one's place in society--but at the cost of the adopted child who makes the story morally complicated. 


I am not judging these people, or saying that open adoption has to be done a certain way. I can't know what it's like to live with giving a child away and having to explain that to the world around me and living with that decision, for good or for bad. I just honestly don't understand how the decision is made to lie, and then justified. Especially by people who profess devout Christianity.


I have been the denied child, the one lied about. The one whose existence made things complicated. I had the wrath of my nmom on my head for daring expose her lies. I am wondering how it will be for these children in open adoptions. Their existence is supposedly known, but not really, or only in circumscribed ways to certain people. My fear is that when they get older, they, like I, will have to pay the price for the lies. The guilt and shame for the lies might be visited on them. I hope not, I really hope not, but it seems as though some of these adults aren't thinking about the consequences that their lying by omission will have on their children.


I am very uncomfortable when people say, "I love you, but I have to keep you a secret." It is harmful and puts the adoptee in a horrible place.


I am glad, in some ways, that I only found my family as an adult. I have been able to process things with an adult's emotional toolbox, and I don't feel that I am competing with my brother for C's love. First, she doesn't love me. Second, I don't need or want her to "mother" me. That time has passed. We can interact as peers, which gives me a huge advantage. This isn't to say that her rejection was easy, just that if I had been around her as a child, and she'd been as cold and distant as she is now, there would have been grave emotional fallout for the child I was. I know myself. 


From my admittedly biased standpoint, these not-so-open "open" adoptions put a great deal of pressure on the adoptee not to ask for too much, not to say the wrong thing, and not to want too much love. Sad. Very sad. Outside of adoption, when is it okay to tell someone, "I love you, but not enough to admit who you are to the rest of the family?"

Acceptance

So much has happened in the past few months that it is taking time for the consequences to sink in. I can talk to C whenever I like, but it is fairly clear from her that it shouldn't be *too* often, unless I really need her. Same for my contact with A. He was very excited after his visit, but now we are both back into the dreary trudge of life. He is busy, I am busy. I could call him, and I have called T, but it's all very superficial. Weather, gardening, what the boys are up to. Work.

I don't know exactly what I expected from all this, but I think the hardest part is realizing that I have to live. Just live. Follow the path I am on and find some satisfaction in it.

From the outside, all is well. I have time and financial stability to do as I like. I have wonderful friends. And yet I can never quite ignore the irritation from the splinter in my soul, the one that has caused me so much pain over the years.

I feel mildly annoyed all the time. I don't think I am depressed--or at least not to the degree that I had been. And yet sometimes there is a flash of the darkness that signals to me that I am not sure what I am living for. What is it that I want to do? How do I do it?

My friend Z has been compiling a detailed family tree for me as he takes particular pleasure in researching. He found ancestors of mine from North Carolina who fought in the Revolutionary War, other relatives who fought in the Civil War. An ancestor who sat on the Supreme Court. I have a rich family history, although I still feel uneasy about claiming it. I am not on any of the family trees, nor will I be. The history is mine, and yet I am not of it. I reread my grandfather's obituary on Wednesday, and I felt a stab to the heart where it said that he is survived by three grandsons. He is. True. But I am also his granddaughter, the one who was too embarrassing to admit. The one who was taken far away to avoid sullying the family name in the small town. The one who paid the price then, and who continues to pay for all the familial ambivalence and nervousness.

A few days ago I went with my friend Joy to the LDS Temple in Oakland. We visited the Family History Center and did some genealogical research in a brightly lit basement, well appointed with books and computers. I discovered that C's brother's birthday is New Year's Day. He was 18 when I was born, not 17, as my non-identifying information stated. Because God forbid that anyone tell the truth. I feel such anger about my family's and the agency's prevarications: "Neuman" not "Newman"; C age was "around" 22, instead of exactly 22; my uncle was not 17, but 18. And then the lies continued.

I have been thinking a little bit about contacting my uncle. C and A have both told me that he wants to talk to me. I put the ball in his court last September, but for whatever reason, he hasn't acted on it. I am not the most patient person in the world. I could probably wait forever and hear nothing; maybe it would be good for me to wait. I understand how difficult it is to reach out to an unknown person. I have made the first step, over and over. I asked Joy what she advised, and she encouraged me, as ever, to do what my gut tells me. She said that I have absolutely done enough, but if I want to do more, she supports me. It certainly would be nice to have someone take the reins; but will they?

I suppose what I am struggling with is the path to finding acceptance in all this mess. There is so much about these relationships that I cannot change. I know that. And yet my feelings of powerlessness are immense and difficult. I am here right now because of what I have done in my life, but also for what I *didn't* do. Such as choose to be born to a woman who was unmarried, and whose family couldn't stand the shame of an out-of-wedlock child.

I wonder if C will ever be able to face her demons and tell me how she really felt at the time of my birth. I wonder if she says nothing to protect me from the sad truth that she wishes I'd never been conceived. In some ways, it would be easier to hear that. In the meantime, I nurse the hope that she might have acted differently if she were coerced. Maybe she was coerced. It seems likely. I just don't know, and the PTSD prevents her from talking. I get that, even accept it, but it's not easy for me.

Then I think about how much my afamily has given to me, all the experiences and unconditional love. I have been so blessed in many ways. Why is it so difficult to reconcile this with the pain and all those years of self-loathing? Why do I always have to be the strong one?

Adjustments

This has been a week of adjustments.

I went back to work on Wednesday for the first time since my pneumonia and pulmonary emboli. I was excited and nervous, of course: what had I forgotten anew?

My colleagues were wonderfully kind, and I had a great shift. Annie, one of the senior RNs, was my guardian angel and helped me stay on track with my admission and then helped me get my second patient settled. I felt pretty good about all of it.

I picked up my second patient around 7:30, just over halfway through my shift. She was pretty sick and needed a blood transfusion because her hemoglobin was very, very low. Her story was extremely complicated. She was pregnant for the sixth time, but had gone to the ER that afternoon because she had had unprotected sex the day before; she didn't know that she was already 30 weeks into a pregnancy. She had a history of cocaine use but had been clean for eight years; she had, however, fallen off the wagon three days previously. Her main complaint was tremendous vaginal discomfort and pelvic pressure. It turned out that she had three sexually transmitted infections and a urinary tract infection. Although she felt awful because of her severe anemia, she was more bothered by the fire below. The ER had started her on a bunch of meds for the infections, and I gave her a few more to help. She was so worried that I would judge her, but I reassured her that I wasn't there to judge, but to help.

The show stopper was that once she found out she was pregnant, she said she planned to walk away and leave the baby in the hospital when he or she was born. Triggering for me, to say the least. I sat down with her and talked about adoption and what it has meant for me. I didn't try to dissuade her from it; it sounds like adoption is the best option for her. She has no family around, and her surviving four children take all of her resources. I wish things were different for her, but they're not. A social worker would come by the next day to talk about adoption and other things, and I encouraged her to think about an open adoption so that her child wouldn't feel cut off from his or her roots. She won't be delivering (hopefully) for another seven to ten weeks, so she has time to mull over her choices. She and I cried together. Working with her was a difficult but positive experience for me. I usually avoid the adoption cases like the plague because it's just too emotionally excruciating for me to process while remaining professional.

Then yesterday I went to see The Adjustment Bureau, a new science fiction film based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. In sum, it tells the story of a young man who meets an amazing woman--once--and it's only meant to be once. There are higher powers keeping people and their destinies on track. The main character (John Norris) meets his love again, and all hell breaks loose; he finds out that free will is very limited.

When John gets to work unexpectedly early one day, he sees the Adjustment Bureau workers changing the thoughts in a coworker's mind--all the people are frozen. He is understandably shaken and runs away. Eventually he is caught and taken to a room while the powers-that-be discuss what to do with him. They say things like, "He will be haunted by questions for the rest of his life," and "He was never meant to see behind the curtain." Sound familiar? John has strong feelings for the woman he is supposed to stay away from (Elise), and he asks, "If I am not supposed to be with her, why do I have these feelings?" Hmmmm. Later on, when John refuses to give Elise up, he is told that if he doesn't leave her and break her heart, her life will never be what it could have been; he will have ruined her chances for professional success forever. That if he really loves her, he must let go. Yep.

The men from the Adjustment Bureau carry books that show the potential life paths of each person, and it is the job of some of the men to keep the people they're watching on track. It is important not to deviate from the script. Again, very much like adoption! Adoptees are given new lives and aren't supposed to question them, think about what might have been, or look for our natural families--think of all the people we will hurt if we do so!

The other strange thing was that Adjustment Bureau workers could appear dressed as normal humans and throw spanners in the works: tie up traffic, keep someone talking, interrupt phone calls, or say things to nudge a person back on the path their lives were meant to follow. It reminded me of the "happy" and "joyful" adoptees and Bee Mommies who cannot accept that their experiences are their own; they must belittle and attack and derail the ideas and thoughts of others who have different, less comfortable experiences. Don't question, don't think, just praise! Be grateful for the opportunities! Love the people who raised you, and only them! Ugh.

Some adoptee friends of mine have said that they will not watch the film because it suggests that there is no escaping the Fates. I don't think it was quite as grim as all that, and the end (which is most certainly not the end of Dick's story) rewards the protagonist's questioning of the life mapped out for him. He would rather choose potential madness than giving up on who he knows he his and what he wants: this is something I have done. There were moments in which I felt rage and great sorrow as I watched, but it was helpful, in many ways, to see my story mirrored in the plot of the film. It might make a good talking point with people who haven't thought too much about what it means to be born, adopted, sealed, and denied.

I had an interesting chat with C on Wednesday. She was busy, but I had told her I'd call and let her know how the visit went. She told me that she wouldn't hear anything of it from A because her husband doesn't want them talking about me. It broke my heart to hear that, even though I understand the position that they are both in. I will work with what I have, but I wish so much that this contingency weren't there. She has three trips planned in the near future: one to visit her mother in Indiana, one to visit A, T and W in San Diego, and then a trip to Paris in mid-April. I told her I was very jealous of the Paris trip, and asked her if she enjoyed museums. She said that she does but her husband does not, so she doesn't get to go all that often. Apparently he despises the "fat, nude women" in paintings in the Louvre. I told her that it's easy to steer away from the Renaissance and Baroque galleries to avoid Titian, Rubens, etc. We laughed. It made me hope that one day C and I could be in Paris together. Not likely, but maybe. I don't know when I will speak to her next, and that makes me sad. 

All my friends remind me that C could turn on a dime and change her mind about me. I know that and protect myself, while loving her all the same. It is too tiring to live with the burdens of suspicion and fear at the front of my mind. It's just not who I am.

Connections

It's Tuesday (well, Wednesday) and the weekend already seems so long ago. I can't believe the remarkable change in my life over the past few months, and especially over the past few weeks. It has to do with things largely out of my control, but I am fortunate that the changes mean positive things for me.

I was horribly nervous as I drove to the airport on Saturday morning. Would A be stiff and guarded? Should I hug him? Could the rift be repaired? As he came out of the terminal to meet me promptly at 9:32 a.m., he immediately smiled and hugged me. I had good feelings. I drove him tto Berkeley for brunch at a small restaurant serving French country breakfasts. We only had a 10-minute wait, which is extremely rare for that place. We chatted about our respective trips to Tahoe, drank our coffee and ate our food leisurely. Afterwards, he asked to go to a store near UC Berkeley to buy some gear. We did, and then I took him on a tour of campus, showing him where the art history department is and where I used to teach. He thought the campus was beautiful (it is, even if it isn't his home turf of Ole Miss), and marveled at how green everything is. It certainly provides stark contrast to the dry, desert landscape of San Diego, where he lives. I gingerly ventured toward the topic of adoption a few times in the morning but was rebuffed gently. 

In the afternoon we met up with Mark and the boys and took our regular family trip to Crissy Field so that A could enjoy the spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Finn ran around gleefully and the boys were pretty well behaved. Mark and I are quite shockingly bad at not keeping exacting tabs on Callum and Tobey, and more than once A would ask where Tobey was and I wouldn't know. I think it's because A has a three-year-old and has to be more vigilant about parental monitoring of child locations. Nevertheless, I am sure A raised an inner eyebrow about my parenting skills. But A is a very genial man and easy to get along with. He and Mark hit it off immediately, and when M drove our minivan up the steep acclivity of Lombard so that A could travel down one of the U.S.'s crookedest streets, both Mark and A were white knuckled in the stop-and-go traffic. They bonded. 

At home later on, we fed the boys and got them prepared for a late-night pajama birthday party. We then let them watch a little TV while we drank beer and ate snacks. A was telling us more about his deployment in Afghanistan, which sounded brutal on all counts. And A does autopsies and works with tissue samples and foreign objects in a lab. So he's used to some disgusting stuff.

The boys went off to the party, and A and I drove to dinner. Once in the car, A said "Let's get it all out on the table. I know you hate me, but this is what I did, and this is why I did it." Apparently he was very depressed while in Afghanistan and the stress of being away and feeling in the middle of C and me was too much. Cutting me out was a way to simplify. We talked about how he felt his religious obligations to his parents meant their desires came before mine. I pointed out that when parents ask their adult children to do unethical things, the adult children are not breaking a commandment by refusing to follow the unethical direction. A countered that ideally parents don't ask such things, and I replied that parents are humans, and humans are fallible, so of course they do. I think it struck a nerve.

A told me that when he got back from Afghanistan, T told him that she was horrified about what they'd done to me. She said that they'd never done it to anyone before in all their years together and that they shouldn't do it to me. He sat on this dilemma until I sent him that impassioned text last November, telling him that I knew they all wished I were dead and that they were horrible people for thinking that. I spurred him and C into action, which is a good thing, I suppose. He also told me that he had a long discussion about me with my uncle, C's brother. My uncle apparently wants to meet me and was very curious about my trip to Posey County last summer. B (my uncle) asked A if B would have recognized me in the grocery store. A told him, "Yes, absolutely." It's so weird to hear him say that because in all the pictures I have seen of C, I don't think I look all that much like her. Maybe it's the gestures or body language that intensifies things. Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part. Maybe one day I will find out.

I was of course crying by this point of the evening. A asked if I knew that he loved me. I said that I knew he did before, but that I wasn't so sure anymore. I told him that if I love you, I love you forever. Even if loving you isn't good for me. He said that of course he loves me, and that he always did. I said that I couldn't live with contingent love, and he said that the time of "the horrible ridiculousness" is over. Everyone knows, and there's no secret to be kept. That's a relief. At one point A said, "K, you have such a big heart. It's bigger than your chest." Other people have told me this, but it was something altogether different coming from my brother, someone I love with all I have. I want him to feel that, and it seems that he does.

I continue to see so much of myself in A, including my insecurities. I know that he's taken the walls down. He's asked me if I would edit his personal statement for applications to fellowships [in a heartbeat!]. It is amazing to feel loved and included. On the other hand, A is suffering from an immense load of guilt. I have told him over and over that I have forgiven him; he needs to forgive himself now. He said that it's hard to do. Definitely. And yet he has to absolve himself. I have been where he is, worried that a person you love doesn't love you back to quite the same degree. I find it ironic that my brother is worried that I don't love and respect him. 

When thinking back over the weekend, it just felt so right. So easy. I can't describe it properly, but there's an intense feeling of connection that is absent from any other relationship I've had. He smells right, even. I could tell he was my brother without input from my rational brain. We know our tribes. Really, we do.

The Furies

I have had a terrible time letting go of the anger that has built up this past week. The non-dialogue related to the primal wound and my personal experience has finally led me to fury. Today there was yet another exchange in which someone told me that I cannot possibly feel what I feel because he or she doesn't feel the same way, and a psychologist backed that person up, telling me I was rude for saying that this person's opinion cannot measure my experience.

Nasty Person: Ms Margalina[sic]: you were seperated [sic] from your biological mother, and you have these problems. That doesn't mean the seperation [sic] caused those problems. I only mentioned myself because I have quite a few of the issues some Primal Wound believing adoptees say they do, and I was not adopted.

Me: Thanks for sharing your opinion, but it is no more than that. Your opinion.


Nasty Ph.D.: Ms. M., I'm not sure why I posted your reply to [Nasty Person], except that I have been posting what you've had to say.
[Nasty Person] did give her reasons for her comment, and it appears to me that it is actually an opinion, derived logically from observation of other people's lives as well as her own-- if "no more", it's also "no less". Real opinions are a different matter from the unexamined prejudices that commonly pass for opinion. 

Me: So [Nasty Person] knows more about me than I do myself? Point taken.

Which led me to think about my old friends, the Furies.

While the power of the Furies is considerable, it is consuming and difficult. The three, Tisiphone ("blood avenger"), Alecto ("unceasing anger"), and Magaera ("the jealous one") can do good work, for sure. I am especially fond of Tisiphone, who avenges crime against family. As an adoptee, I have had my share of crime against family.

The rational side of me, on the other hand, recognizes that the anger I feel is what my enemies want me to feel. If I am furious, they have won. They have no interest in learning about what I feel, or why. Their self-proclaimed job is to reeducate me and point out what they see as my "foolishness."

I have asked myself why this studied deafness to the story of my pain is so anger inducing. Why are they invested in telling me, over and over, that I am wrong about what I feel? Why can't I recognize they are abusive and just walk away?

The answer? It taps straight into the life I have led, for nearly forty-two years, as a second-class citizen  an adoptee. Of being told that everything that happened was all for my own good. That any pain I felt was invented, unless it follows the trajectory that "child development" has staked out for me. That my story is not as important or worthy as those of people who follow the "rules."

When people don't hear me, when they don't at least make an attempt to listen, I become furious. I used to blame myself, but now I blame them. It is time to let go and not to engage, even when I want to help fellow adoptees. There will always be people who cannot accept that people have their own experiences that are not quantifiable. As my father always likes to say, the social sciences are soft. They like to think they're peers of the hard sciences, but humans aren't chemical compounds. You can never control for all the variables where humans are involved, unless you keep them in cages. And even then, you have the rogue variables of genes, even if you remove environment and human contact. Good fucking luck with that, Dr. Moreau. Yes, I mean you.

I told someone recently that I felt vivisection of adoptees was the only means to prove to empiricists that some adoptees feel what we do. Dr. Moreau expressed disbelief: "Why did Ms. Marginalia say that?" This was, in my opinion, disingenuous. It's all about the data, and the data can only be gathered by what is seen. Dissection of a living organism provides data. Personal accounts don't hold water because they are exactly that: personal and tainted. And this person is a psychologist.

But I digress. I was talking to my friend Joy today about this, and I decided that these non-adopted people are befuddled by the depth of our feelings of loss because it's a complete non-issue for them. Anyone who has grown up with their natural family immediately starts out with a sense of groundedness that adoptees don't have. Abusive natural family or not. You look like people around you and can see yourself in others. It's so subtle that it's unremarked. And because it's subtle, it cannot even be seen to exist. Except for those of us who don't have it, have missed it, and want it. If you don't care or don't want it, fine. Hooray, you! But that's not the case for many of us. And to be told, over and over and over, despite telling our stories, that we are wrong and misguided and slaves to "fuzzy" or nonexistent science? Well, fuck you. Again.

So next time I get furious, remind me that these so-called people don't have my best interests at heart. Not at all. They don't want to help, they want to belittle and badger. They aren't worthy of my time or attention, no matter how many degrees they have (or don't).

I remember back to sessions with Dr. Brodzinsky, whose opinions matter to me a hell of a lot more because he has worked with adoptees for his ENTIRE career. Although he doesn't embrace the primal wound, he doesn't tell adoptees that they make shit up, either. When I told him about these dismissive harpies bitches people back in October, he told me to turn as deaf an ear to their entreaties to "understand" as they do to my accounts of what I feel.

I'll save my next call to the Furies for something more worthy.

Peace out.

Trust

I am, in general, a trusting person because the alternative is hard to live with. I would usually rather believe the best in people and be proved wrong than be continually suspicious. That said, there is pain associated with living this way. Not that I have a choice, really. My temperament isn't such that I can readily close myself off. 

Although I have suffered greatly from the way members of my natural family have treated me, and I cannot  trust them completely, there has been progress. I was thinking about a few weeks back when my sister-in-law T said that she wished our relationship could go back to the way it was last spring. I would like that, very much so. Being nervous and hypervigilant is exhausting, but I think there's a way for me to protect myself by being cautious about how much I give and how much I expect back. The key is to expect little and be surprised.

A and I exchanged a volley of texts this past weekend while we were both up at Tahoe. We checked in with each other, and I told him about a snowball fight I had with two of the kids. I mentioned to him that I owe him about 1,000 snowballs. He agreed. We definitely missed out on kid play together. Then yesterday I texted with T about their weekend, what the kids had fun doing, the cabins we each stayed in, and so on. Then about half an hour later, I had a call on my phone from T. I picked up and said "Hi, T," but it was actually A on T's phone. He wanted to call to chat and tell me that he's excited about coming to visit my family this weekend. This was unexpected, as I felt I had to twist his arm to come. He said that he thinks we'll have great fun. 

I've noticed that whenever I cautiously begin to mention things related to our family relationship, he begins to change the subject and get nervous. I don't know if that's because it's too painful, if he doesn't want to think about it at all, or if his guilt about what happened is a roadblock. I need to ask him, but I would rather do it in person. A year ago, he would gladly call me his sister and tell me he loves me. It's a different game right now. Maybe he regrets jumping in head first when he found out about me. I know it was a lot for him to digest.

I also had a wonderful conversation with C yesterday. She wanted to hear about the procedure to insert the filter, how I am feeling, how the kids are, whether we were able to meet with A at Tahoe. She was very kind and solicitous. She asked more about my aparents and asked me to give her best to my father, who had surgery yesterday. We spoke about how my amom is a redhead with not enough hair on her legs to be worth shaving, whereas C and I have great quantities of dark, thick hair. I told her that it was hard on me as a teen-ager not to have someone around to teach me about plucking and waxing. She laughed and said she wished she could have helped. We spoke about my maternal agrandmother and how she had a half-sister herself, placed for adoption before 1900. And how my grandmother never denied this sister. C thought that was wonderful. She also told me that she hopes A will be in a good mood this weekend; she said it was impressive that he is coming because he doesn't like to make plans with many people. Finally, we talked about how we both like our friendship. The only sour note for me was when she said she had to go because it was getting toward the time when her husband comes home. I understand that he doesn't want me back in the picture, but it makes me sad that it has to be this way. I don't want to make C's life difficult, by any means, but I feel angry that her husband continues to pile shame on her after 41 years of marriage. 

I really didn't see any of this coming a few months ago when I woke up each day and wished I were dead. It is how it should be, but that in itself is scary because it is rare that anything in my life is as it should be. I feel my heart opening up to them because they deserve it, and I feel that my love is being returned. I feel immensely joyful. 

Wounds and investments

I have been involved in several discussions over the past week about whether infant adoptees are capable of knowing that they have lost their mothers after birth. These discussions pop up on a regular basis, usually because the naysayers get their knickers in a twist when we "woundies" [aka people who have found value in Nancy Verrier's book, "The Primal Wound"] say we believe in something that is devoid of scientific evidence (per the naysayers).

What I don't understand is why people are so invested in telling other people that what they feel is wrong. The naysayers allow us our feelings, supposedly, but they tell us we have misattributed those same feelings, as if we are completely unable to understand ourselves. Someone said in one of the arguments that she thinks "woundies" feel sad because we realized over time that we were adopted and lost our natural families, but that we erroneously attribute our sadness to the original loss. I would argue that for me, at least, there is a combination of both: an original loss, and experience over time.

I lost C on the day I was born. She never saw me or held me. There is a great deal of research that shows newborns are able to recognize the voices and smells of their mothers (and working in Labor and Delivery, as I do, we have protocols that take this information as a basis for keeping mothers and babies together, as much as possible). The naysayers believe that while neonates may recognize their mothers, it doesn't mean that the newborn actually prefers the mother. That recognizing smell and sound is instinctual, not emotional. I agree that there is not scientific research that proves an indelible tie between mother and infant, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I am also unwilling to say that the keeping mothers and infants together is important for everyone except adoptees.

I have been an highly anxious person as long as I can remember, and before I could put words to it. This is my lived experience. In the recent debates, someone not adopted came along and told me that he or she has been anxious as long as he/she can remember, but wasn't separated from his/her mother, so what I am saying is hogwash. My response was that he or she feels something similar to what I feel, but there is nothing to say that everyone who is anxious has the same root cause for the anxiety.

Or in another case, a psychologist said that the primal wound theory is detrimental to potential adoptive parents, who might feel inadequate or paralyzed when they realize that their adopted infant/child has felt a profound loss. That reading Nancy Verrier's book, "The Primal Wound," could cause post-adoption depression in adoptive parents, so adult adoptees need to stop talking about these false, unscientific wounds to protect future infant adoptees from depressed parents. WTF?

After so many days and months of this, I don't understand why so many people who are not adopted have such investment in telling adult adoptees that we're WRONG when we talk about what we feel, or how we feel it. It is just so odd. It's like they think we choose to feel sad. There is no choice. For some of us, it just is. I know what I feel and what I have felt my entire life, and to have someone suggest that they know better than I do is highly presumptuous.

I was talking to my friend Thomenon today about this, and how it has some parallels with the way queer people are treated by reactionary factions in the United States. That being gay is a "choice" and that if gay people would reexamine their lives, they would see their faulty thinking. He said that the "choice" issue is bogus: he would never have chosen to be gay, given the obstacles that society puts in the way of queer citizens. He feels that there is a biological component to being gay: he always knew he was gay. And that his life as a gay man has been shaped by his place in society at large and his position in queer culture. His experience as a gay man is thus both biological and cultural in its foundation.

It is a fact that adoptees belong to families other than those we grow up with. Our feelings about being adopted are not a "choice." Seriously, if it were, I would choose to be one of the joyous, cheerful, very happy adoptees who see nothing but goodness from here to the grave. That would be a much easier path, but it's never been who I am. Cultural expectations of adoptees to be grateful and happy, adoring of adoptive families and vilfiying of natural families are also problematic to me. There is a middle road in which I love my adoptive family, love my natural family, and have felt lifelong sadness about the loss of my mother and who I might have been. Sadness that cultural expectations led me to hide and subvert until it turned into crippling self-loathing and self-doubt. NOT an inability to form lasting, meaningful adult relationships, as the naysayers have written.

Now I speak out about how I feel, and I am told that I am "allowed" to be sad, but only within the parameters that others delineate. Boundaries that "science" has set up. I love science. It's great. But not when others use it as a bludgeon to push me back into compliant adoptee mode. "Science doesn't uphold what you say, so your feelings are 'probably' invalid unless you agree with us that you started to feel sad when you were three and realized that you were adopted and what that means."

Sorry, not playing. I am too old.

Vive la resistance!

Serendipity

So the strange goodness of my day continues. I took Callum to his Cub Scout meeting, and when I left, I noticed that A had called me. "Great," I said to myself. "He's calling to cancel his trip."

I put the kids to bed and called him back, expecting the worst. As many well trained adoptees do.

I was pleasantly surprised. He was calling because T had told him that my family and I are going to Tahoe this weekend. Turns out A is going to be up at Tahoe, as well, and he wanted to see if there was any possibility of our meeting up.

I was thrilled that he thought to tell me and even considered getting together. He and T will be there with another family, his best friend and wife and daughter. Which means he doesn't mind introducing his Yankee sister to his friend! Even if it doesn't pan out for us to meet, he wanted to. Wow. I feel loved, really loved.

He also told a really cute story about being in a "Build-a-Bear" store with W, my nephew, and his friend J (the one who will be up at Tahoe). Apparently W was sitting with his legs spread wide apart, making his bear, and ended up with a hand down his pants. He was having a good time, clearly. A was horrified and said, "Boy! What are you doing?" in his loud Southern drawl. J roared with laughter and said it was like the Clampetts [the Beverly Hillbillies] in "Build-a-Bear." So A's new thing is to call his family the Clampetts. How narrowly I missed being a Clampett--although A is very well educated for a Clampett.

Maybe things are looking up for real. But then I remember to ask: Is this my life? What cruel joke lies ahead?

My love is as fair as any mother's child

I took Callum to see Giselle performed by the San Francisco Ballet on Sunday. Innocent love, betrayal, death, and love beyond the grave: how I adore the impossible passions of the Romantics. If today hadn't happened, I probably would have written a long, dolorous discourse about the pains of love. But the gods smiled on me.

Callum was gorgeous in a suit and looks so grown up. I was proud to have him as my date, and I caught many of the little girls checking him out. I have quite a future ahead of me, I fear.

Normal

I believe that normal is relative. I'm not going to jump all over you because your normal is different than mine. Unless, that is, you are a scientist who tells me that babies don't care if they are taken from their mothers, or that adopted babies are appropriate test subjects because they're malleable little creatures.

That said, what's normal for me over the past 41 years has been feeling pain. When the accounting is done, I am emotionally in the red. There is that pesky problem of not feeling human, or only feeling human as of late, and then not human in other ways. Of being unlovable, or only lovable for my brain. I am disposable. In my mind, everyone I know is running (or planning to run) to the door to get away from me. I know rationally that when people run away, it's their crap, not mine (usually), but the fallout is the same. I have to deal with their absence, and it's not fun.

And yet today I had a surprising, grounding experience that made me feel normal again. For the first time in a long time. I can't say more than that, only that I feel hopeful, at least for now, about really being human.

I am trying to feel normal about my brother's upcoming visit. He arrives a week from Saturday and leaves pretty early on Sunday. I know he's petrified. After all, we adoptees are scary beasts. He still carries around a bunch of guilt for his abandoning me in May and worries my family and I haven't forgiven him. I have forgiven him, but of course he can't move on until he forgives himself. And I can't do anything about that.

Our day together was neatly planned a month ago, although you know it never ends up quite so. First, he and I will go with my friend N to brunch at my favorite Provencal restaurant in Berkeley. We'll spend the afternoon at Crissy Field or Fort Funston in the city with Mark, the kids, and Finn, and we will end the day with a tete-a-tete dinner at a wonderful tapas bar in Berkeley, just the two of us.

We've never actually had sober alone time. What will that be like? I want to ask him all about Afghanistan, but I fear he won't want to talk about it. I know he's planning to apply for fellowships for specialist training in pathology: GI diseases or something like that. I know we can nerd out together and talk about science and BBC television shows, but I hope he'll also be willing to talk about some difficult things. I realize that I know him too poorly to trust him with a whole lot of my hearts of darkness (not to mention he's smashed me to pieces before), but I want to be able to confide in him and build something beyond the superficial relationship we have now. We will see. I have to remember there isn't a rush. We cannot make up for the time we have lost; we can only move ahead. And I can only control myself and what I do.

It is so fucked up to have met my brother in middle age. To love him and be afraid of him. My job is to find some version of normal in this whole tangled mess? Wish me luck!

Being Human

I have been watching a BBC television programme called "Being Human." It chronicles the "lives" of a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost who wish to be human and exist without the baggage of their supernatural natures.

In the episode I watched today, George, the werewolf, was mourning the ordinariness he will never have: a home, a partner, children. He says, "This isn't the life I get now. It's something that happens to other people." He wants a mundane existence so badly he can taste it, but every time he tries to build one, he hurts other people by denying who he is. You can't take the werewolf out of the boy.

I can empathize greatly with these unmoored characters. Being adopted has made me feel, in many ways, less than human. I *am* human, of course, and I function as a human. And yet I cannot take things for granted that non-adopted people can. My skin is thin, I walk alone, and I feel most comfortable in the company of my fellow adoptees. There are days I wish I were a vampire who could take out some people who try to "fix" me or trivialize what I live, every day.

I am sick of being told that I experienced nothing amiss, that any family is as good as any other, that biological kids suffer, too. Of course they do. But they know who they are and can choose to be other than that. Adoptees had no choice. Our entire existence is based on erasure, of being changelings.

No, I don't make my own pain; it came with the package. Sorry, "scientists," you can fuck off. For those people who say that adoption is an event, not a life: you're fortunate. I wish I could take the adoptee out of me, but without it, who *would* I be? I will never know.

Jugular

I was in the hospital yesterday to have a filter placed in my inferior vena cava, or the vein that carries blood back to the right atrium of the heart. The hope is that the filter will be an insurance policy to prevent any more clots traveling to my heart, lungs, or brain.

The filter is a rather creepy looking thing, a cage with small spikes to keep it anchored in the wall of the vein. Frankly, it looks like a torture device for small animals.

I was expecting to have it placed through my femoral vein, in my leg, but as I was being wheeled into the interventional radiology suite, the tech told me it was going in through my jugular due to "physiological anomalies." Nice.

At that very moment, I knew I would need a LOT of Versed. The thought of having a hole in my neck with things poking down into my body was hugely anxiety inducing. It made me feel extremely vulnerable; one wrong move and I'd bleed out.

I did get the Versed, mercifully, but the RN was cautious (she said she wouldn't be stingy, but I beg to differ). I am used to getting 2mg of it with 100mcg of Fentanyl (synthetic morphine) for conscious sedation. Apparently my blood pressure was low enough that they didn't want to risk it dropping, so I only got 75mcg of Fentanyl and 1mg of Versed. I was wide awake but not freaked out during the procedure, and I didn't feel pain. I didn't however, want to remember it--I do--or have an enormous amount of pain afterwards. I did. They gave me 650mg of Tylenol in recovery and wished me well. Yeah, Tylenol is really going to cover it. I was quite a testy patient and got the hell out of the recovery room as quickly as I could. One of the RNs asked me if I have a low tolerance for pain or a high tolerance. I think in general I have a high tolerance, but now having had chronic pain for so long, perhaps my tolerance is low. I don't care. I hate feeling like my head is ripping off my body. She should try it sometime, and take some Tylenol.

Today I am still in pain. That pain is compounded by a lot of things emotional. I was thinking about vulnerability, and how so many people love to attack others in the metaphorical jugular, just for sport. And then say, "Well, you deserved it," or "Aren't you a victim," or "My pain is worse than yours and you don't know shit." You'd think that by the age of 41 I would be able to brush off these idiocies. I would like to be able to brush it off. But I am not quite there.

I don't like it when others use me to feel better about themselves, or perhaps more exactly, I don't like it when other people tell me that they feel so much better about themselves because they see me as such a piece of shit. I am reminded of many times over the past few years when I've been speaking to friends about problems in my marriage, and they come back the next day and say, "Wow! When I told my husband about what's going on with you at home, we had the hottest sex we've ever had!" I don't need to know this, really I don't. Hooray for you! But please don't tell me this.

I sit here feeling wounded on many levels from the literal to the spiritual. And adoption has nothing to do with it? Again, if I had known my father's medical history, I could have prevented the clots. If C hadn't taken 11 years to talk to me, maybe I wouldn't have taken so long to think of myself as human. If I had loved myself, I wouldn't be rotting here alone on my island of solitude.

Yeah, bad day. Get the fuck away from my jugular.

Raw

Mistakes. We all make them. We punish ourselves, others punish us. Guilt is a tremendously powerful force.

Being adopted makes me hypervigilant and hypersensitive. I feel guilty about things I have no power over because I feel that it's my job to make people happy. I become anxious when things aren't right. Highly anxious. It is unsettling both emotionally and physically.

I am working to change how I react and better assess what I am responsible for and what I am not. I cannot take on everyone's problems, nor should I. Sometimes people don't communicate with me not because I am a horrible person, but because they have their own shit going on.

We all have our trauma. This isn't to say that we're all stuck in trauma, but trauma changes you. You carry the scars with you. People will lash out, withdraw, and do any number of things when their scars are noticed or touched. I have had friends turn cold when I've "come out" about my adoption, probably because they have plans to adopt and don't want to hear about any negatives, or when I've talked about problems in my marriage and they look at their own marriages and are afraid of the very things I confide.

Sometimes I feel like I take baby steps forward in trusting where I am going, and then a gust of ill will blows me five steps back. Who can I trust? Even when I do everything I can to find my footing, I fall down. Do people understand that their anger is like poison? When they turn it on me, it infects me and I want to return it, with interest?

We all have our stories. I can respect that our stories are sometimes interconnected, and sometimes in conflict. It would be great if we didn't judge one another's stories. I try not to judge others, but I do sometimes. And I know I am judged. As my friend Joy said to me today, "Contempt, sadly, is very satisfying."

On days like today I despair of the constellation and our allies ever working together for adoptee rights. Adoptees are a largely silent minority. We are marginalized when we speak out to say things other than "I am grateful for my adoptive family and that I wasn't aborted or thrown in a dumpster." We need the help of friends, our adoptive parents and our natural families; fighting amongst ourselves gets us nowhere.

While we should be circumspect about what we say and how we say it, we could also have more compassion for others and think when we are triggered before slamming someone else with a two-by-four. Part of activism is teaching. We may not want to repeat our hard-won lessons, over and over. Yes, teaching can be tedious, but that's how the word is spread.

When I first joined the online adoption community two and a half years ago, I didn't know that first/original/natural mothers didn't like the term "birth mother." I didn't know that it wasn't the "triad," but the constellation. I didn't know that there was an annual protest to advocate for adoptees to get their records unsealed. I have learned a lot but there is more to learn.

I will try to be as understanding and supportive of those following me as most people have been to me. I met so many amazing people at the protest last summer. I am glad to be a part of something larger than myself, and it was fabulous to be in a safe environment with people who get it. Yes, it was one hell of a ride to be around so many damaged people, but it was like being home.

I am glad that adoptees have a safe place for expressing themselves, even though many of us have different feelings and issues and backgrounds. Some of us are more comfortable speaking out than others; I have practiced speaking out in that safe zone, and now speak out elsewhere, sometimes. I make mistakes. We all make mistakes.

Let's try to forgive so that we can work together. Because I need something to live for and work for. And this isn't it.

Process

My 30 days of truth are at an end. My final assignment is to write a letter to myself, describing all the things I love about me.

Dear Kara,


You are smart and strong. You do right by your friends and family, at least most of the time. I admire your enthusiasm and passion for life. You are willing to dig deep and explore, and to travel far and wide, both across the globe and within your own soul. 


You take pride in your work and don't get complacent. You are fiercely loyal and protective of those you love (and even sometimes of your enemies). You can readily admit when you've made mistakes.


You would rather take on the burdens of others than burden others yourself, especially when it comes to emotional pain. You (usually) believe the best of others until they prove you wrong. 


You value yourself as an individual, and recognize that you are only one voice within a larger community. You take your responsibility to the greater community very seriously. 


Life is a process, and you know there's always more to learn. You are humble because you are aware of how little you really know.


Keep up the good work.


I love you.


Baby Girl Newman, who held all of that potential within her tiny self

Overhaul

If I had to change something about myself, I would...

Have better hair. I am just sick of the frizzy waves.

Cook more. I am a lazy princess.

Be nicer to people. Nah, I pretty much let them walk all over me as it is.

Be neater. (Mark suggested that one, but I told him it was highly unlikely.)

Be a better mom. I wouldn't want to spoil them, though. The wicked witch thing works so well.

This is a tough one. Even with the past month's deep introspection, I am unsure what to choose.

My beloved friend N told me today that I could stop giving people second and third chances to be better people. They are who they are, and by cutting them slack, I give them even more chances to be evil to me. Yes, I think I will go with that one.

Stop giving people so much latitude.

Time to abolish "nice."

Choices

If I found out today I were pregnant (which would be a freaking miracle--but that's another topic), I would end the pregnancy. I say this for several reasons, even though I don't find the prospect of an abortion particularly appetizing.

My health is such that it would be highly unlikely that I could carry the pregnancy to term, and would be dangerous to me if I did so. I could throw a clot that would block blood flow to the placenta, or that might go to my heart, lungs, or brain. I am unwilling to play Russian roulette with my body and possibly die, leaving my other children without a mother. [For me, this is very separate from suicide.]

I am 41. I don't want to have a baby when I am 42. I am tired all the time, and I get to sleep through the night. I don't want to take care of helpless infants again, however much I enjoy the way they feel in my arms. That's what I do at work: take care of newborns, and then give them back to their parents. It's perfect.

I feel very, very good about my family being complete. I have never seriously entertained the idea of a third child. It would not be a happy or welcome surprise. I would not want to "gift" said child to another family because I cannot, in good conscience, create an adoptee who is blood-related to me. Even with an open adoption, I could not tell this third child, in truth, "I love you as much as your brothers." Some women can do this. I am not one of them. I am one of those adoptees who would rather have been aborted than placed. Again, this is harsh. I am not saying that my life is worthless. What I do feel, however, is that the pain I have felt every day has been such that I wouldn't choose it for myself. C got to choose, and I am living with her choice. I am not giving her a medal for having me.

I would be very concerned about Down Syndrome or other anomalies. I would have an easier time terminating at 7 weeks than at 12 or 16 or 20 weeks, although I would do so later, as well. I know I would be a terrible parent to a child with special needs. This may sound harsh, but I know how I feel and what the reality would be. A special needs child with me for a mother would not be happy. Yes, people can adjust and rise to the occasion--but I cannot do that particular job. As I said in an earlier post, I would have aborted either of the two sons I have if they had tested positive for Down Syndrome. This may make me a monster, but I can live with that. I couldn't live with knowing I could not love that child with all my heart and devote myself to taking care of him or her. It reminds me in some ways of a first mom I know who says she couldn't raise her first child because she didn't love him from conception and the moment she knew she was pregnant. The pregnancy--and child--were unthinkable burdens, so she placed. It's about capacity and willingness to love, and some of us have more to give than others. It depends on person and circumstance, I suppose.

I am glad I live in a society where I have choices. I am not proud to say that I'd have an abortion, and I do everything possible to prevent such a thing from being necessary.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope

What's the best thing going for me right now?

I have to pick just one? Thank goodness for poetic license.

First, friends.

For the first time in my life, I am surrounded by friends who really love me, and I love them back. I don't worry about being someone other than myself. They know the good and the bad, and they accept both.

I don't have to in the closet with all my adoption issues because most of my friends are adopted, and if they're not, they understand and support me to the best of their ability.

Second, hope.

I have emerged from the painful tunnel of no escape, at least for now. Even though my health is still not great, I don't have an overwhelming desire to give up on life. I have a place, and I see it. When I reach out, my reaching is reciprocated. This could change tomorrow, but I don't want to be pessimistic today, just realistic.

Third, reunion.

Who knew, a year ago, that C would come around? I had no hope at all. It is hard to stare at a brick wall and have any faith that it will come down. I might be a fool, but I am nothing if not tenacious. It has been life changing to have my brother, sister-in-law, and C actively in my life because THEY want to be in it.

To be, or not to be

Have I ever thought of giving up on life? Yes. Several times. No, more than several. Sometimes on a daily basis.

How is this possible? It's a combination of chemicals in my brain, self-hatred, loss of hope, and tunnel vision.

I have felt less than human for most of my life. I am an adoptee. Yes, I know that I am human, but I didn't feel like I belonged to the human race. I was a changeling. I could speak the language and understand how to move about my surroundings, but something was never quite right. It's like living in a foreign country--and for some adoptees, it is a very REAL foreign country--but most people don't want to admit out loud that you don't belong. No matter. You KNOW it. And if you verbalize this feeling of not belonging, you will be squashed and ostracized by the "bitter/angry/ungrateful" police.

No matter how hard I tried, and no matter how much my parents loved me, I thought my life a huge mistake. It didn't help that I always felt like an outsider, and I was treated like one in the community in which I grew up. I had different goals and ideals. I didn't want to be average. I was taller than most kids until high school--and even now, I am not a short, petite woman. I stood out, literally and figuratively.

It didn't help that I couldn't love myself. It is incredibly hard, however, for most people to love themselves, and even harder, in my opinion, for many adoptees. We felt we were abandoned, whether we were actively abandoned or not, by our original families. And if an innocent baby is beyond the love of the people who made her, how could anyone else love her? Ever? I know this seems far-fetched to many of you who are not adopted, but imagine being set adrift and having to try to understand who you are without any point of reference. It is excruciating and exhausting.

I started cutting in high school. I wanted to self-mutilate because I preferred physical pain to emotional pain. I thought about cutting my wrists, deeply, so that I would bleed out. Not existing seemed a decent option to a life of never-ending pain. But I was afraid.

I thought again about suicide in my 20's. I was unhappy in graduate school, and none of my intimate relationships ever seemed to work out. I can see much of that now as poor choices made on my part, but at the time, I thought that academia was right, and I loved those men. Why could no one love me back with the same faith and intensity, why could my adviser cut me down at every turn? When I was 27, one particular breakup--and graduate school--left me wanting to die. It wasn't so much missing the guy as feeling that my situation was entirely hopeless. No one would ever love me, I would never get a job, I would always be the whipping girl. What was the point? I was the first person that people would sacrifice. I was worthless.

It is really hard to communicate how it feels to be suicidal. Death simply makes sense when you're in the pit of despair. Telling someone not to kill themselves is a good thing to do, if it is done with real kindness. If it's just that you think suicide is morally wrong, and the person who feels suicidal knows that you aren't invested in him or her, it's probably more irritating than anything else to be lectured. It's like condescending head-patting when others want to smooth things over and take control, rather than accept and acknowledge the suicidal person's very real feelings of pain.

I remember my psychiatric nursing rotation vividly. We watched a difficult documentary film called The Bridge, about people who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge over the period of one year. We discussed the film with our professors, and learned what is useful and not useful in supporting someone who is suidical. We learned about what it takes to 5150 someone. I liked this especially because I learned what it was safe, or not safe, to say to people who have the power to commit me. I don't want others to take control over what I do. I've had enough of that in my life. I cried when I  worked with the many suicidal children in the in-patient unit, many of whom were adopted, and from Russia and Guatemala. Coincidence?

To be quite honest, I was actively suicidal from May of last year to early January of this year. I was functional most of the time. Very few people knew how awful I felt. I had my adoptee friends in my corner; they kept me afloat. I saw a series of different therapists, none of whom helped me. I tried Zoloft and then Wellbutrin. People berated me for even thinking about suicide because I would be abandoning my children. And you know what? I. Didn't. Care. So much of my life had been spent taking care of other people's feelings. I knew my kids would be devastated, but I wasn't going to stay alive for any reason other than wanting to stay alive for MYSELF. Living for others is a very, very hollow experience. I don't recommend it.

I cannot even describe what it's like to be hanging from the cliff by one fingernail. It's so horrible that nothing, absolutely nothing, matters, except ending it all. There were times I was suicidal when my parents were visiting, but I knew I couldn't do it when they were around. I didn't want them involved with the immediate aftermath. I didn't want to leave a note. I just didn't want to go on, to breathe, to do ANYTHING. Every act of living was too much.

What saved me in the end? My first mother and her compassion.

She knew I was suicidal. We talked about it. She was very kind and honest, and by opening herself up--at last--and allowing me to be part of her life, I finally felt that my whole existence hadn't been one huge, damned mistake. I finally belonged to two families, both of whom love me. I was not an alien any longer. C owned what she had done, and by taking back all of that guilt and silence, she freed me from a huge part of my burden.

I know that C's family tree is deeply gutted by depression and suicide. That was good to learn, as well. It wasn't that I was aberrant or strange; severe depression is in my genes. That's not to say I can't conquer the dark feelings and blankness. I can. I am still on Wellbutrin. I am finished with therapy because I am not opening myself up to be misunderstood, yet again. I know my limits. I will try not to give up. But it's a battle.

I don't know what the future holds. I may end up on the brink again. Right now it seems like that was a different life, but I am too wise to try to convince myself it will never happen again.

Why am I still alive today?

I am alive because of a drunken encounter one July evening in 1968. I am alive because C was too afraid of her mother to abort me. I am alive because I didn't know what else to be. I am alive because of all the love my friends and family have given me.

I am alive today because even when I gave up on myself, it wasn't my time to go. That, and the Wellbutrin.

On a tangential but related topic, two nights ago I read a review of an exhibition at the British Museum concerning the Egyptian Book of the Dead. While the Egyptians didn't call it "The Book of the Dead," Egyptologists use that term for collected papyri that tell the deceased how to navigate through the afterlife. The texts recount spells and provide guidance for surviving ceremonies and encountering different beasts and gods. The Book of the Dead provides a fascinating view into ancient Egyptian conceptions of life, as well as death.

One particular passage, related to judgment, describes the weighing of the deceased's heart. It must weigh exactly as much as the feather of Maat, symbolizing right or truth. If the deceased fails the test, the heart (and the deceased) will be devoured by a beast that is part crocodile, part hippopotamus, and part lion. No more afterlife!

Talk about regret.

Weighing of the Heart, from the Papyrus of Hu-nefer

Songs

I rarely make mixes for people because I believe taste in music is extremely individual and territorial. I can appreciate when people make mixes for me, but I am too shy to push my own preferences onto others. I don't like putting myself on the line.

That said, I decided that if I were to create a playlist for someone, it would be for my first mom. I am quite sure that she wouldn't appreciate my choices (she's very into Country music), but it's no more than a musical tribute to my feelings for her. It is short because it's too painful to think about at length.

1. Mary Gauthier, "Mama Here, Mama Gone"
2. Mary Gauthier, "Blood Is Blood"
3. The Magnetic Fields, "I Don't Want to Get Over You"
4. The Pogues, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God"
5. Kirsty MacColl, "They Don't Know"

When I was born, you left me. I have cried, over and over, listening to Mary Gauthier sing about the baby's arms reaching for her mother over and over, and then finally giving up. There was no one to come hold me in the beginning, at least no one with a plan to keep me in her life. Something in me died as a result. Blood is what ties me to you. Not only in terms of its metaphorical associations with family, but because we have spherocytosis. You cannot erase our DNA.

I never wanted to get over you, even though people told me I should, and that it was my duty to forget you. That I should honor your wish--supposed wish--never to see or talk to me again. That I was interfering in your life where I didn't belong. I took antidepressants and sleepwalked through days and years until I had the strength to say "Bollocks!"

I have felt so separated from you, so alone, so desperately sad that I felt God and the world had abandoned me, along with you. I know it sounds melodramatic, but it is very real to me. It was incredibly difficult to live with the huge hole you left in me. As I told you once before, you were always the third parent in the room, the one I was trying to please and make proud. I just wanted you to acknowledge me and accept me as yours.

As for people not knowing: they don't! I am tired of arguing with people who call me bitter or say that I am betraying you or my aparents by doing one thing or another. No one ever understands that loving one parent doesn't cancel the other out. And you know what? I don't care if they know or don't know anymore. We have each other again, and that's huge. A year ago, I would never have dared dream of this.