Bitter

It's January 3rd. I return to work this afternoon. I am both apprehensive and excited about it. So much to remember, although I love my patients. As we say in the medical arena, a good shift is when no one dies, so I'll aim for that. It's reasonable.

I am feeling bitter. Adoptees who speak out are often labeled as "bitter and angry" or "anti-adoption" when we speak out about things that are seamy in adoption; things that could be changed for the better for most people involved in adoption; things that aren't necessarily about being grateful for having a home and strangers willing to take us in and love us as their own (if and when they can); things that are ambivalent.

But I am not bitter because of my adoption issues today. I am bitter because the procedure that I had to help stop the pain didn't work. So here I sit, saddled with the same pain I've been battling for nine months, and I don't know what to do or where to go from here.

The next step may or may not be surgically implanting a pump that permanently bathes my nerves in narcotics, which would allow me to stop taking oral narcotics (not that they have much effect on me anymore, other than stopping my pain--I function normally because my body has become used to them). But that's more surgery with a big question mark attached to it. Will it work? Or will I have a pump in my abdomen that does nothing?

Last night I was so depressed and suicidal that I didn't let myself get out of bed. If I had, I would have thought seriously about an overdose. At least I was able to fight with myself and the "good" Kara won. For now. I can't deal with therapy. I have tried.

I am having a hard time envisioning a life in which I have to struggle with this pain, every day, forever. I am tired, irritable, and anxious. I don't have much left to give anyone, let alone my patients. We will see.

Many of my friends don't know what to say anymore. I have told them not to say "Chin up, things will improve." That is rainbow-farting, and I can't process it right now. It only makes me more angry. Yes, one minute at a time. But having lived the last nine months one minute at a time, the minute-by-minute thing has become very wearying.

Sometimes you just have to sit with what you've got, accept it, and soldier on. I am a good soldier, but my heart isn't in it anymore.

To be honest, the only thing keeping me breathing right now is my dog. He's adopted too, never says "be grateful," and is a warm body when I need one beside me. He isn't bitter.

Horizon

So here I sit. Emotions thrashed, engaged in discussions about the existence/nonexistence of infant reactions to the loss of their mothers. Why? I need to set it aside for now or risk falling down the rabbit hole of my own anger and sadness.

And yet I have spent much of my life feeling sad and silenced. Asking for help and getting little or none. Being ridiculed and abused, and even worse, being complicit in that ridicule and rejection. How awful is that? I have to return to what my therapist told me last week about my being exceptional at having compassion for others, but being bloody awful at turning that compassion inward.

Writing this blog is helpful, certainly. It feels great to stretch my brain and write for myself. Not an academic paper, not for anyone's approval. Just to write and revel in the pleasure of the words that run to my fingertips as I type. It's like swimming for me, only perhaps even better. I feel at home in the words.

I was speaking with my beloved friend Thomenon yesterday. He has been through more trauma than I can imagine in one lifetime and keeps going; he is first among my cheering section and has a bitchy wit unmatched by anyone I've ever met. He's written brilliantly and poignantly about his experiences under the Khmer Rouge here. I have been honored to be his friend and editor along the way, and to have him mother me when I go astray. He was my maid of honor at my wedding, and in true fashion, I was in my wedding gown trying to get *him* ready for the processional. I digress, but he is a worthy digression.

So yesterday he was telling me that I have a novel in me. "Why do you fight writing so much?" I don't know. Maybe I think I'm not worthy. Maybe I am still buying into the horrible things that people said to me in my youth. Probably. As my brother A, and Mark, and pretty much everyone who's heard my story of reunion (plus prologue and epilogue) has said, it's better than fiction. Certainly seamy enough. Thomenon came up with hilarious chapter titles, sent me off to do some academic reading to ground myself, and told me to have fun.

After all, I may have inherited clots and blood disorders and an insanely powerful liver able to withstand pretty much whatever I throw at it, but maybe I also inherited good writing skills. I can try.