The death of childhood December 17, 2008

Life has thrown many obstacles at me, as I am sure is the same for many others.  Some people just seem to go through life without too much difficulty, without ever knowing what it feels like to be abused, depressed, suicidal or any of those other fun things that come along.  

I on the other hand, am not one of those people.  Because of that I have been in therapy for what seems like an eternity but is really only six years.  I have a myriad of diagnosis including chronic depression, PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and Borderline Personality Disorder.   However, I don’t really think of myself by those things.  In all reality I am just a person, thats all it is.  A person with things I have to deal with, and have dealt with, tremendously well all considering.  I am a completely different person now than I was six years ago, three years ago, even one year ago.  However, some things just never cease to amaze me.  New things pop up that I hadn’t even thought about.  

One of those was in a therapy session I had yesterday.  My therapist asked me to write a letter to my mother, and start it with Dear Mom, I hate when you…. and list all the things from my childhood that I hated when she did.  So I did.  I started with the pen to the paper and Dear Mom, I hate when you scream at me… and so on from there.  Without too much time passing, I found myself in tears and with a list that was four pages long.  The saddest part was that none of the things were one time only things.  They were ALL things that she had done to me, more than once, and not I hate it when you wouldn’t let me go to so and sos house.  Nothing like that, all things that were regulars in the list of I hate it when yous… 

When I got to the fourth page I stopped.  Simply because I was crying too hard and I didn’t want to go on.  I closed the notebook I had written it in and didn’t think about it again.  Didn’t remember a lot of the things I put in that list because I was writing from the heart and not from my head.  

In Session yesterday my Therapist, J, made me read the letter out loud.  I surprised even myself when I had a hard time doing so.  I don’t know why, I guess because A.  I knew it would hurt her, and B.  I knew it would hurt ME.  I knew that reading that list would transfer what I had written from a secret place locked deep in my heart, to a conscious place in my head.  I didn’t really want to do that.  I needed to do it.  

I did it.  In reading the list of things I myself wasn’t even ready to hear, I made yet another realization.  Well really J made the realization through the tears in her eyes that I didn’t want to put there.  My mother was abusive.  

I was abused.  Not just sexually abused, that I already know about… a little hard to forget, even though my mind had done a good job of it.  But I was abused, by the person who was supposed to love and nurture me and care for me forever and ever.  Not physically, no she didn’t hit me any more than the slaps when I did something wrong.  No she was verbally and emotionally abusive.  

I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to me.  But it does.  It hurts, it brings up things I don’t want to feel.  My mother was abusive.  Not an easy thing to deal with.  

Particularly since the worst part of it is, I love my mother.  I really do.  I don’t know why, I guess that deep part within me that loves her because she is my mother.  I love her because she isn’t ALL bad.  She isn’t a terrible awful person who belongs somewhere in the pits of hell.  Which is hard for me, because I would think that all abusers belong somewhere in the pits of hell.  

My mother does not.  She is a good person <BAH> really, she is.  Well I guess I should say she TRYS to be a good person.  She was the girl scout leader, the mom who always went on field trips, the one every other kid loved!  She made the best cookies, she made the best projects, she was creative, she is all sorts of good things.  

However, she is also abusive.  It wasn’t on purpose, I KNOW that.  All she ever wanted in the world was to be a mother (I know right?  Barf) I just wasn’t the right daughter for her.  Too bad there isn’t a store or something where you can pick the right kid.  Had things been different perhaps it would have worked better, but I was just not the right kid for her. 

I do not allow myself to still be abused, we have come to this relationship that seems to work, where we both pretend that the past never happened and we are just this happy family la te da.  

So how does one go about dealing with something like this?  Dealing with a rationalization that comes in adulthood.  I guess I just keep going about doing what I am doing and hoping the eventually the majority of my demons will settle.  That hopefully I will know how to be someone that is not anywhere NEAR my mother.   I can’t make the past better, I can’t make it different.  I can keep going toward the future but I wonder how to effectively let go of the past, without burying it in a non healthy way, as I have done for so long.

How does one learn to cook? December 16, 2008

After posting my blog about Gavin Rossdale, I realized just how much I missed blogging.  

I started this blog as a place to get out my feelings about adoption.  Not that those feelings aren’t important anymore, they just aren’t at the forefront of my life anymore.  I have come to terms with things.  

I do however, miss blogging.  So blog again I shall.  Only instead of being my Adoptee blog, it will just be my life blog.  Probably not nearly as exciting, but hey, maybe someone wants to read about my life.  

I realized today a fundamental thing about myself.  Its actually been brewing for quite some time now.  

I have discovered, that against my honest thoughts, I can’t cook.  

I always thought I could, I mean, I make KILLER meatballs, I have a secret ingredient.  I can make a great box of macaroni and cheese, and hamburger helper?  I can make the best you have ever tasted.  Its a little bit depressing to realize that beyond that, I really just have no cooking skills whatsoever.  

I cooked a lot, with my mom, as a kid.  I was in girl scouts, I made lots of things.  And I really do make great meatballs.  With my mother watching over, I always managed to make just about everything that a recipe was put in front of me for.  Served to the family, everyone commented on how great it was.  And I got this false sense of confidence in my cooking abilities.  I really honestly and truly in believed that I was a good cook.  When I moved out of the house at 20, I had a little teeny studio apartment.  Along with a little teeny fridge.  The freezer was sufficient enough for a box of hot pockets and maybe a bag of chicken nuggets.  Other than that, nothing would fit.  

I lived off of boxed food, sandwiches, chicken nuggets and all other easy things that most would probably associate with children.  I made pizza bread with french bread when I felt like it, and perhaps a chicken sandwich on occaision.  However, that was the extent of my actual cooking.  I didn’t have a real oven, and only a hot plate for a stove.  I didn’t cook.  However, I was still deluded that I could.  

I moved in to my current apartment with my Bdad and fam the October before last.  I still didn’t cook much because after five years of making it on sandwiches, mac and cheese, and hamburger helper, I really didn’t expand my horizons much.  Besides, I was always really busy.  

So this October, I lost my job.  That is pretty much a whole blog in and of itself.  But anyway, I found myself with all this time on my hands.  Plus as one of the few bonus’ of losing my job.  I qualified for food stamps.  So I decided to give real cooking a try.  I was excited, I was going to make all sorts of stuff.  

The only thing I really managed to make was the realization that I just really suck at cooking!!  

I attempted a meatloaf, and… well… it was more a… meatbrick.  It actually wasn’t terrible all considering, but it wasn’t what I would call good.  It was one of those things you wouldn’t mind eating if you were starving and that was all you had, definetly not what I would call yummy.  

I attempted a chicken and rice casserole, the chicken came out pretty decent, the rice casserole part… not so much.  It was pretty much like eating dry rice.  And I tried really hard, putting cheese and other yummyness into it.  It just didn’t work out so well for me.  

Today was by far the worst.  I decided to make BLT’s… well okay BL’s because I don’t like tomato.  I cooked the bacon, real bacon, not the heat and eat stuff for the microwave I usually get.  I figured bacon was probably pretty easy.  Nope, aparantly not.  I like my bacon crispy, I thought at one point it was almost done, I’ll put the bread in the toaster… came back a few seconds later to take out the bacon.  My crispy bacon resembled something that looked more like one of those hard dog treats that is supposed to resemble bacon but really doesn’t.  It was like this burnt red color and pretty much broke into a thousand peices when I went to put it on the sandwich.  I burned the bacon, I mean how hard is it to cook bacon!!!!  

I also attempted to make eggs, but we won’t discuss that either.  

So what I want to know, is how people just learn to cook!!  I have been taught to cook, my mom is a really great cook! (one of the few things she is good at)  So why is it that I can make a couple of things really well, and everything else I am just a total cooking idiot?  I read the directions, things just never seem to turn out well for me!  

Is it a matter of practice?  Is it just going to slowly get better, or am I doomed to a life of cooking for idiots cookbooks and hoping my kids don’t mind crunchy bacon (not that I have any, but when I do)

Gavin Rossdale December 11, 2008

Okay, I know I havn’t written here in… well like forever.  I guess I just havn’t really been in an adoptee state of mind for a while now  I do however, always think little blogs in my head and have a hard time not writing them down sometimes.  

Tonight I have one that was just begging to be written, and what the heck, I have a blog, why not write it.  

I don’t know if any of you have that one person in your life.  That one celebrity or whatever that you just attach to and for lack of a better way of putting it, fall in love with.  No I am not talking about the OMG Brad Pitt is soooo hot kind of love.  The kind that the person speaks to you in a way, and perhaps at a time when life wasn’t so easy, for whatever reason.

That person for me was Gavin Rossdale, the at the time lead singer of Bush.  Of course, it doesn’t help that he is OMG sooooo hot, and I was sooo 14 when I first laid eyes on him.  But seriously, Gavin was my man, he was my teenage obsession that lasted a long, long time.  I knew his words by heart, I knew his voice by heart.  I was absolutely positively in love with him.  I won’t go into all the mushy barfy details, but he was a constant when my life was constantly in turmoil.  His was a face that made regular appearances in my dreams.  His was the voice that got me through the hardest times of my life. 

My mother, being my mother, refused to let me go to a ‘rock concert’ even with a chaperon.  So I was never able to see him live on tour.  Every year he would come, every year he would go, and every chance to actually see him, and every hope of mine, would go with it.  I had all the t-shirts, all the cd’s, all the posters.  My walls were covered in Gavin.  God I was ridiculous.  But his words got me through.  

Years went on, and Bush came apart, and I never really heard much about Gavin after that.  The only time I heard about him was because of his wife, Gwen Stefani (I was devistated when they got married, he was finally, officially, taken).   Then one day, I was listening to the radio and I hear this song… and it sounded just like him, I knew beyond a doubt that it HAD to be him.  Love remains the same, thats what the song was called… isn’t that just a freaking kicker.  After all this time, yes, Love remains the same.  I freaked, all I could think of was OMG I hope he goes on tour again and I know, this time around, I will be able to see him.  I don’t care where he goes, I don’t care how much tickets are, nothing was going to stop me from my chance to FINALLY see him!!!  

In my town, the local hit music station puts on these little concerts, they call them listener lounges.  They put the tickets out there to their club members in the form of a raffle, you use points that you collect from listening.  Needless to say, they somehow managed to snag Gavin.  And I somehow managed to win tickets.  It didn’t even really click in to me what was going on.  I guess nothing that good ever really happens to me.  These little ‘lounges’ as they are called, are very private, only 40 people can get in.  40 people and Gavin.  I couldn’t believe it, it was fast.  I won the tickets on monday and the concert was tonight.  I didn’t have time for it to sink in.  Not to mention, I didn’t know what to expect. 

When I saw him, I couldn’t fathom it.  It was just a little thing, no ‘backstage’ no outfit changes.  Just a chair, a guitar and us.  Gavin walked in with his enturage, and it was just about pitch dark.  No one seemed to notice, I hardly noticed, I was standing in the back of the croud, and I couldn’t fathom that that could possibly be him, just standing there.  Then I walked up, and there was no mistaking, I was standing in front of my hero.  I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t much of anything. I reached out my hand and touched his arm, I think I stuttered, but I said OMG I can’t believe its really you, he smiled and his bodyguard told me they would be doing a meet and greet later, basically like ‘yeah we are working toward that chair over there, don’t draw the crowd’.  I just said Wow, I think I am going to cry, he took my hand, said ‘don’t cry’ and pulled me into a quick hug.  Even as I write this I can’t believe it happened to me.  This kind of thing just DOESNT happen to me.   He sang, he played guitar, all the while I was just in awe that he was THERE… like right there, right in front of my face there.  

Tonight, I met my hero.  My Idol, my icon, my obsession.  Tonight, I got to fulfill a teenage dream that I never thought would be possible.  Because tonight, not only did I see Gavin Rossdale perform.  I met Gavin Rossdale.  I HUGGED Gavin Rossdale… TWICE!  I got my picture taken with Gavin Rossdale, and I got his autograph.   I touched him.  I didn’t just see him from 53rd row seats in a stadium, like I would have had I gone to a concert at 15, I touched him.   I hugged him, he hugged ME!  I heard his voice, not from a distance, but from close enough to reach out and touch his fingers on the guitar.  I heard him sing close enough to see the look in his eyes.  I heard him perform my favorite song close enough so see his eyelashes.  

Tonight, was by far, the very absolutly best night of my life.

Flashback April 16, 2008

I was sexually abused when I was a child.  I know I have written about it before, but its a big deal in my life. 

The thing of it is, it isn’t always a big deal in my life, in fact, most of the time, I don’t even think about it. 

It started with the movie Georgia Rule.  For those who havn’t seen it, its about a girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather.  And the movie is about the family dynamics after she comes out with the truth. 

Its so different than the dynamics of my family, and the dynamics of what happened in my family after the truth came out for me.  See, my mother didn’t ever do much of anything. 

And it makes me angry.

It got worse when I called my Grandmother, I don’t often do this, because well she is a lot like my mother.  And I know before long, the guilt trips, no matter how subtle, are going to start.  I wasn’t dissapointed.  She went on about how sad she was that I couldn’t show up for Easter.  I started thinking, if my mother had just told her, if she had stuck up for me in the slightest bit, my Grandmother would know why I didn’t show up for Easter.  It made me sad, it made me want to tell my Grandmother what really happened so that she would know. 

Then there was a game… a game for kids about knowing the difference between okay touch and not okay touch.  A game that teaches kids that its not okay for someone to touch you in ‘those’ places.  That its okay to be uncomfortable, and most of all, if it happens, its okay to tell someone.  Its okay, and its not your fault. 

All I could think about is that maybe, just maybe, if someone had talked about these things.  If I had someone I could have talked to, someone I could have trusted.  Maybe I wouldn’t have had to suffer with the abuse for five years, maybe it would have only happened once, and maybe I could have gotten through it.

Instead, yesterday, I suffered my very first flashback from the abuse.  It was scary as hell. 

Expecially since before this I could barely remember any of it… any of the five years that I suffered through hell. 

I was terrified, thank god for my therapist, who could be there, and allow me to relive some of the worst moments of my life.  Thank God for my ability to get through things. 

I guess I don’t know where this is going, perhaps I just felt the need to put it out there.  Its something that I guess has needed to happen for a while, and I guess it just caught me off guard, because I have spent years trying to pretend that this all didn’t mean anything to me. 

It also brings up a lot of feelings that I just want to go away.  Feelings towards my mother, feelings towards anything.  It made me think about how I am going to go about all this now that I know I need to do something, do something if I am going to make these hard feelings go away. 

I keep thinking I need to write a letter to my Grandmother, telling her what happened, explaining to her why I don’t come around for holidays anymore.  Because even though it should be my mother, it should be her explaining to people.  Because she is supposed to love me and protect me that way, but its not that way. 

I am going to have to do it.  I guess having a flashback, I guess reliving these moments, feeling like he was right there.  Feeling him on my skin.  It was my bodys way of telling me i’m ready.  I am ready to do something about this, work through it.  Get through it.  I suppose the first step is my Grandma.

I guess I am just afraid that I will get the same reaction from her that I got from my mother. 

I’m even a little afraid that she will do the opposite, what if it blows the whole thing out of the water.  What if then, I am thrown into dealing with it. 

Worst of all, what if I have to face him. 

The curse of the adoptee February 23, 2008

I haven’t written in this blog in forever it seems. 

It was always my favorite, and made me sad to stop writing in it.  However, the reasons to not write are now really, in a way, gone.  So perhaps I shall start writing again. 

I have been thinking a lot about adoption lately, and how it has effected my life.  Maybe perhaps it is just triggered by certain things. 

My life has changed astronomically since I last wrote in this blog.  My Meemo and I had a falling out, now we speak pretty much entirely by email, and don’t see each other very much.  Honestly, yeah I miss spending time with her.  But the emotional aspect of being with her, and what it does to me, at times isn’t even worth it.  I feel like I have to be a different person, like everything that I am is just annoying or obnoxious or just plain wrong.  Perhaps if I weren’t so afraid to be myself, and were just able to do it.  It would be different.  I suppose I have found my spot for her, understood that we will never have the relationship I wished for.  I do, at the very soul of me, understand how she works when it comes to me.  It hurts me to know this, because I know how I feel towards my adoptive family.  The love that will never really go away, but will never burn strong either.  Just because of the situation.  I suppose it hurts to know that the woman who made me will never quite love me like her own child.  I have adjusted, and gotten to a place where I can handle that. 

I didn’t choose to be born, I definetly didn’t choose to be adopted, but its the burden I bear none the less. 

As far as the other aspects of my life.  I moved into an apartment with my bDad, my bsis, and my Mama L. 

I wish I could say that worked out fantastically, but that would be a lie.  I suppose I am just bound to never have a nurturer for a mother.  Never have another female to really grow close to, to really be nurtured by.  I have my therapist, and I suppose thats what God has given to me as my mother nurturer. 

My bDad, I call him my Daddy.  Probably because he is the only one who doesn’t seem to mind the childisness in me sometimes, is my Godsend.  If there is such a thing as fate, and there is one person who is put on this earth to fix things.  He is that person for me.  Still is that person for me.  Which is amazingly and absoultly wonderful.  I couldn’t be happier to have him.  It isn’t without its imperfections though.  There have been confrontations, not between my Dad and I, but others in the family. 

I suppose I can understand, in fact, I know I can understand.  Here is this family, that has been going along fine for years, then all of a sudden, there is another kid in the mix.  Only this kid isn’t a kid, she is an adult.  And no one knew.  Nope, my Dad never felt it necessary to tell anyone about me.  I was a secret that he kept to himself, waiting to hear from me.  But no one else in the family knew. 

I can imagine that would have came as a shock to me too. 

I put myself in their shoes, particularly my Mama L’s as much as I possibly can.  Sometimes however, I just want to be in my OWN shoes.  I just want people to understand that I am a person to, and because of the stupid adoption word, I got a very short end of the stick here.  I am not going to whine and say it isn’t fair, because life isn’t fair.  Mine certainly hasn’t been. 

The fact of it is, I know I am lucky.  I know i’m lucky, because at the end of it all, I got my bDad, even if sometimes it is a fight. 

I just wish it didn’t have to be a fight.

My sister said something yesterday, that of course triggered a lot of feelings.  We were watching a pregnancy show, and it showed the father cutting the childs umbilical cord.  E. asked L. did Daddy cut all our umbilical cords?  Yes, he did. 

I was thinking to myself… I don’t even know who cut mine.  I don’t even know what I looked like when I was born, when I came out.  Was I blue?  Did I scream right away?

My Daddy wasn’t even there.  The man I care about more than anything in the world, and he wasn’t there. 

My Daddy didn’t see me until I was 24 years old.  He wasn’t there when I was born.  Neither were my aparents. 

Its just so backwards to me, and I wish it didn’t have to be.  I wish I weren’t the secret, I seem to be cursed not to belong ANYWHERE. 

A ramble in a thought July 25, 2007

Sometimes I wonder if life is really always the same, if the stress and turmoil ends, if it somehow just starts to get easier somewhere along the line. 

Pretty much every time I think I have gotten all my ducks in a row, I discover that they are so far from a row, I don’t know how the hell I thought they were in one in the first place.

I am so tired of hiding all my feelings, so tired of everything being a stress just because emotionally, I seem to not be able to handle keeping it inside myself.  I wonder where the hell the balance is, the balance between hiding it all, and letting it all out loose. 

Some days I sit here and I want to write, but don’t for fear that not much that could come out of my mouth at the time would make much sense, thats how I feel right now.

Have you ever loved someone, so much, that it just hurt.  Have you ever wanted to try so hard to make them realize what they mean to you, that you would be willing, despite every terrifying fear of heights, to jump out of a plane with a sign that just says… I love you, please just accept me?

My whole life, I feel like I was never much accepted, at least not in any way that would constitute 100% acceptance of everything that I am, every feeling that I have, and everything that I can be. 

Perhaps I was accepted, and I was just looking in the wrong place.  Perhaps I just don’t know what the hell I am talking about. 

Reunion sucks… it can be good, and it can suck.  I have two reunions really, the one with my Dad, and the one with my Mom.  The one with my Mom?  God I don’t even know what to think about that anymore.  Its like sometimes that we are two of the same people on completely different wavelengths.  Everything we say, and everything we do, just doesn’t match. 

We piss each other off, we annoy the hell out of each other.  Sometimes I feel like she can’t stand to be in the same room with me.  Sometimes I long for her more than any other person in this world, and other times I just wish it could be so, so different, but since it can’t, I wish for it all to just go away. 

I hate this… hate it with all my might, my passion, my everything.  As I feel like its just one more thing that I just cannot do right.  One more thing that I just screw up beyond belief.  Yet I know that I am not completely at fault.

There is something about the two of us, something about our personalities that are just so much alike, and yet not alike enough, that we clash, horribly it seems. 

I tried my damnedest to change who I was so we were enough alike that we didn’t clash anymore, that sure as hell didn’t work. 

I am discovering that I have the ability, in my brain, and in my heart, to realize that despite all my seeming strengths here, that I have not allowed myself to be the only person I can be, and that is me. 

I guess I have just spent so many nights wondering who exactly me is.  This whole adoption/reunion is just really tripping me out.  Really messing with my head, especially now. 

I have a too good to be true reunion with my Dad, I have a new mom, my Mama L.  Who I love more than I ever expected myself to be able to. 

Then I have my Mom.  My Meemo.  Somebody needs to find me a book on how the hell to do this!  Perhaps I shall write my own if I manage to survive this. 

Is it possible to miss someone, and yet not want to see them at the same time? 

Is it possible to have so many conflicting feelings that you just don’t know WHAT to do with them, or yourself?  I just get through the day, and tell myself that I am so much better, and so much stronger than this

Surprisingly enough, its actually been working.  I have found that every step that I have made forward, is making me stronger.  Making the person that I am stronger.  Making myself at least feel a little better, and a little more in control of the parts of the situations that I can control.  It makes me less aware of the parts of the situations I cannot control.

I have found this strength, something that comes from somewhere so deep inside me I cannot even describe it, I just know its there. 

However, in the habit that is me, I also find myself fighting this strength because it doesn’t even feel like it belongs to me.  It feels like I should curl back up into the hole I have felt so safe in for so many years, just because I know what to expect.  Where this strength of mine would rather just stand on a mountain top and scream for all to hear that I am not as weak as I appear. 

Some days I even know, in the deepest depths of my heart what kind of person that I really am.  I realize that that person, above any, deserves a fighting chance at everything amazing that person can be. 

Sometimes it even amazes me that that person is me.

Heaven and Hell July 22, 2007

God, where do I start, where do I begin. 

Sometimes I wonder when life is going to stop being so emotional, perhaps it just isn’t.  Perhaps I am just doomed to be stuck in a whirlwind of feelings that make me feel as if I am going to split into a million pieces at any moment. 

Sometimes I really envy my Meemo’s ability to just seemingly not give a shit about anything.

Me however, I get my emotions from my Dad… and boy did I get a hell of a lot of them. 

My life flips between heaven and hell.  Heaven being my bDads house… I am just going to call him Dad for now on.  When I refer to Dad, its my bdad… my Dad and Mama L.  Or just Mom.  Mama L. is my Dads wife… my biological-step-mother… but hell thats a long name.  So Mama L.  She shall be. 

The two of them, they are the home I have never had.   The loving, doting, understanding parents that I just never got.  The people who are now the holders of my heart. 

The funniest thing?  I never expected to like her, I just figured she would just be like, there.  I figured I would be the enemy… after all, I am the enemy’s daughter!  I would have a hell of a time separating those things… somehow, amazingly, she can. 

She loves me.  How the hell did that happen?  And you know, I love her back.  Love her to death actually!  Its hard for me, to split that kind of love between two people in my life, always has been.  I have been a one person kind of girl.  But nope, kinda hard for me there.  I love both of them… My mom and dad. 

And no one can tell me otherwise. 

I have a family, I have a home.  I can’t tell you for how long I have needed these things.  Well I shouldn’t say needed them, after all, I survived quite fine, for quite a long time without it.  In fact, I never really knew what it felt like to really ‘feel’ like a family.  To really feel accepted, loved, unconditionally, without judgement, without fear.  And by two people none the less. 

My life on the weekends is filled with this sense of acceptance, where the worse thing that can happen is Mama L. reads the last chapter of my new Harry Potter book, and therefor knows how it ends.  When I don’t want to know… knowing that she does know drives me insane!

Where the best thing that can happen is she comes up with a name… for us adoptees, we know how important a pet name can be (Possum??  Stick up for me on this one?)

Mine is Melon. 

Yep Melon.  She saved herself from me being really mad about Harry, by calling me Melon. 

I thought it was because me, Dad and my new grandma pretty much finished off a whole watermelon by ourselves. 

Nope, nothing to do with that… I am her mushy melon.  Thats what she said… you’re my mushy melon.  (Which has nothing to do with me being fat… LOL)  Just cuz I am a mush… and someone amazingly likes that. 

So yeah, she distracted me from Harry for a while with that. 

But anyway… thats my weekend, my weekend of being Melon, cuddling on the couch, and Harry Potter. 

I come home to reality, and well, reality sucks.  It makes it even harder to leave, because I know what I am coming back too. 

Back to a place where I am judged, back to a world where the negative emotions rule.  Where my sister and I have a talk about her…. and her life.  And the hell she is stuck in.

She is stuck in the Hell that I lived back when I lived with my amom.  Only she can’t just pack her things and leave. 

Only she doesn’t have another family to turn to.

My adad, as much as I love him, has moved on.  He has moved on to his other children (biological) with his other wife, and his other life.  He treats my sister like she is an adult. 

Which would be fine, if she were.   However, my sister is mentally a child.  She is mildly mentally retarded.  Smart enough to know she is in Hell, not smart enough to be able to actually do something about it, like get out. 

When my adad dotes on his ‘new’ children, it kills her.  She wants that love, that acceptance.  She wants away from my amom.  She can’t, shes stuck.

I am so torn, I wish there was something I can do, but legally, there is nothing.  My amother made her sign her life away to her.  My sister had to sign paperwork relinquishing her own legal rights to herself… the ones we all gain at the age of 18.  She signed them away, and gave them to my amom. 

Meaning my controlling, semi-crazy, witch of an amother, has complete control of my sisters life.  And my sister is 20 years old. 

Now that I am gone?  The emotional abuse that I suffered for so many years is now being poured onto my sister… the food issues, the emotional issues, the body issues, the self issues, the screaming, all being poured onto her.  I was the scapegoat, and now I am not there anymore. 

My poor sister is getting the brunt of it, and she can’t handle it anymore. 

I told her she needs to get into therapy, I guess she brought it up to my amom, and she got the response that broke my heart, the response that I remember getting oh so many years ago.  When I first knew I was losing my mind. 

“I can’t afford that, what do you need that for, you are fine, if you have a problem, talk to me!”

My heart breaks in two for my sister, and breaks in two for myself.  Breaks in two for me, because there is nothing I can do, but emotionally, I suck at handling her.  I am almost empathic, always have been, which is why I don’t connect.  Their emotions become my emotions.  I come home from a weekend of being somebody’s baby, and I get to be the only string my sister has.  Unfortunately being her only string brings me to a place that I just emotionally can’t handle.  However, I love my sister, and I will be that string, for as long as I possibly and mentally can be. 

God, I wish, I wish for a million years that I was strong enough to handle it.  I wish there was something I could do.  I wish I could slap my amother in the face and scream at her the way I was screamed at for so many years. 

Tell her that she has one more shot, one more child… don’t F it up mother… because shes all you got.  You lost me years ago. 

I don’t think she even knows what she does, by my heart breaks for my sister, and knowing there is nothing I can do. 

Knowing that starting now, I will be counting the days, hours, minutes, until I can go back to my safe haven.   Where I can hide from reality and just suck up the one thing that I have lacked for years and years. 

Wishing to god my sister had one too. 

Wishing to god that I had some kind of idea on what the hell to do. 

Our scars remind us, that the past is real… July 17, 2007

…. I tear my heart open, just to feel. 

Oh but I have felt so much lately.  Felt so much I haven’t even been blogging.  Felt so much I re taught myself how not to feel… because I didn’t want to. 

I have pretty much cut off the world from the me that is right now.  Sure I go to the forum, sure I email, sure I speak.  But no one knows what I have been feeling lately, no one. 

Not even my therapist, who for weeks I was avoiding speaking truths, until I finally broke and discovered that pretending to be strong doesn’t always equal being strong. 

I wanted to be strong, I wanted this world, and everything thats in it right now, not to touch me.  I wanted to be this big strong rock of a person, I wanted to be mature, to be strong, to be everything that I wish for myself to be. 

In doing so, I have been letting go of myself piece by piece. 

I told myself I didn’t need support, I was wrong. 

I need it. 

Even if I just write, even if I just speak, even if I just something. 

Because this not letting these things out is killing me, slowly, but its killing me. 

I thought that allowing myself to feel, allowing myself to be emotional was the same as allowing myself to be fucked up, to be crazy, to be mentally ill. 

I am NOT any of those things… I am just me.  Sad little me, but me none the less.  And keeping these things inside is what is making me crazy. 

Life right now, is hell in a handbasket.  Most days I wake up and wish I hadn’t.   Some days I wish I could just go back to sleep, some days I wish I had never woken up at all.  Some days I just wish I had never been born. 

Oh yes, there are plenty of days I wish I had never been born.  The way I figure it, it would have made EVERYONE else’s life easier, including mine.  No one would have to deal with me, including myself. 

I have tattoos on my wrists… tattoos that remind myself that life is short, but death is an eternity. 

I am tempted to go get choose life… choose life Jessie, choose life. 

And not for an unborn baby, for the baby that was born that is me. 

I have a lot of things to be happy about.  Especially right now, with my bdad… who I just call Dad.   God do I love him, love him so much it scares the shit out of me.  And you know what??  He loves me back, so it doesn’t need to scare me so much, but it still does. 

Its been a long, long time, if ever really, that I have had safe touch from a man.  And this man, my Dad, oh he loves to touch, almost as much as I do, shit he will even wrap his arms around me in the grocery store.  He’s big enough to make me feel small, and that is quite a feat in and of itself.  He does it though… he loves to watch musicals… we watched Chicago together snuggled in on the couch.  Loves his salt water tank, we can spend hours just staring at it. 

Most of all, he just loves me.  I am not used to it, not at all.  I don’t know as if I have ever been looked at the way he looks at me… the way he just looks in to my eyes with love.  I feel it, just by a gaze, I can feel it.  Its amazing. 

So what the hell do I have to be so depressed about?

Oh just about every other shitty ass thing in my life.  My job, it sucks… I got into trouble, and now my work environment is hellish.  Its been hellish for a while, but its even more hellish now.  I have decided that working with children, at least for me, at this moment, is akin to working in the seventh circle of hell.  I can’t do it anymore, I just C A N T. 

Unfortunately I don’t have much of a choice.  I am looking for another job, but the job market isn’t exactly brimming with opportunities for an unskilled, uneducated young woman.  I don’t have a college degree, and I don’t have any experience in anything except… children. 

My brand new car, my brand spanking new beautiful baby blue jelly bean, has two major dents/scratches/slashes whatever.  Things that despite my insurance, I can’t afford to fix.  And because there are two of them, my insurance is throwing me two deductibles… that equals $1,000.  Oh yeah, hang on let me just go out to my money tree… oh wait thats right, I don’t have one. 

So my brand new car doesn’t look so brand new anymore.  No, no it doesn’t.  It looks like its been through a bit of a war.  I want to cry just looking at it.   Fixing it?  I am going to try… I have 550.00 from the insurance company to cover $1,550 worth of damage… we shall see what ‘fixing’ it turns out to be.  And I have to wonder, what the hell is so wrong with me?  That I can’t just have something NICE for once in my life.

Oh yeah, and I can’t afford the damn thing, the car I mean.  My adad was SOOO into me getting the thing, I will help you, I will help you.  Thanks dad.  My credit card is maxed, my rent is over due, my electric bill hasn’t been paid in months, the only reason I have internet/phone is because I only have one phone… and my sister also has a line on the same plan.  My insurance is automatically deducted… and my car payment?  Well I am just making that. 

I am in so far over my head, without a life vest, I am drowning.  I can’t even afford to see my therapist, I figured I am a big girl, I don’t need her.  Yeah fucking right.  

I don’t know what to do anymore, the depression that I have dealt with for years is creeping back on me.  Yeah sure life with Dad is great, but life with Dad lasts for exactly two days out of the week.  That and he lives over 80 miles away… 80 miles… gas = $3.00 a gallon?  Oh yeah, cuz I can afford that. 

And it breaks my heart when I have to leave, I hate it, because its like back to reality Jessie.  Back to this life where everything sucks and you really wish you could just crawl in a hole until Friday reappears again.  

I am staying with my asister at my amoms house for three weeks.  That in and of itself is a bit of a trigger.  And I love my sister, but being with anyone ALL the time is difficult for me, much less with her ALL the time.  My sister, while not ‘retarded’ does have some special needs.  She needs someone here, I am used to not having to answer to anyone.  Its difficult for me, and she doesn’t understand the concept of a lot of things… like money.  Like the fact that I have N O N E. 

Its a little bit like having a full time babysitting job, without any of the bennies.  Like my own bed to sleep in.  I have to sleep in my amoms bed, in my amoms bedroom.  The effect that sleeping in my Meemo’s bed has on me??  Exact opposite of that effect is the effect that sleeping in my amoms bed has on me.  Bleck. 

I have no one really IRL (in real life) to talk to.  I have a buddy, A.  I love him to death, and he is cool to hang around with.  Cool to shoot the shit with, not so much when I feel like I am drowning in my own life. 

My other friends?  I really don’t have any.  One who is very caught up in her own life, always has been.  I see her maybe twice a year, and thats about it.  The other… well the other is a relic of a best friend that I had in the days when being a borderline was the story of my life.  I don’t even consider myself borderline anymore, don’t qualify for the diagnosis. 

When a diagnosis is all you have in common with someone, and you loose that… you loose what you have in common. 

My Meemo?  I don’t like to burden her with the shit in my head.  It scares me sometimes what she will think, react, say.  I don’t ever know what her reaction is going to be to me.  I never know, and I don’t like the unknown, so I avoid it.  She doesn’t like emotional… got that.  So I don’t do emotions… I am strong, I can shut them off!

Just not forever. 

Hopefully just writing this helps… I have the forum.  For any of you adoptees out there who aren’t on the forum, you must be.  Its like a safe haven for us adoptees to talk about… well… being an adoptee.   Click here for forum

I haven’t been sharing enough on there either.  I need to start opening myself up again, for my own well being.  After all, emotions aren’t bad, they just are.  I deserve to feel whatever I need to feel.  Right now I feel suffocated, suffocated by my own circumstances in my life right now. 

I realized, that I am doing a lot of the suffocating to myself.

Accepting July 3, 2007

Ah, I have been so meaning to blog but just havn’t gotten around to it. 

Technically my computer is fixed, I got the call today to come and pick it up.  However, I am about 80 miles away in a very very country setting. 

Somewhere I can actually see all the stars in the sky.  Its quite amazing to if I might say so myself. 

I am at my bdads… I don’t even need to call him my bdad, he asked me on Sunday if I would feel comfortable calling him Dad. 

Dad

Well that is definetly not the way I imagined all of this going.

I also have a sister, E. who is so much like me its almost scary.  I have never been like anyone in my life, and I now have two people that I am very much like, in very different ways. 

Oh sure, there is also a whole bunch of me thrown in, but I like it, I like having a sister I can relate to.  We have gotten along amazingly well, all of us. 

I even have a Niece, I have never had a niece, and I have to say, I am quite fond of the little kid.  Shes quite cute, really smart, and likes me.  The first time I heard Aunt Jessie I almost melted, I have a niece.  I love her already. 

In these last few days, week or so, I have really done a lot of thinking, a lot of self examining, and a lot of reflecting.  As proven in my last post as well.

I have allowed myself to grow up, I know this sounds silly, as I am 24 years old, already a grown up. 

However, I allowed myself to let go of a lot of the things and issues that have been holding me back, even a lot of the ones that have to do with adoption. 

For the first time in my life, I am not terrified of being abandoned, I know that the people I have are either still going to be around, or they are not.  It isn’t a great feeling, but one I am learning to sit with.  After all, fear accomplishes nothing, being afraid something is going to happen doesn’t help anything, in fact, a lot of the time it hurts. 

I am learning to let go of my fears.  

I have discovered the joy of true self reflection, of truly saying, ok this is my life, and this is what is in it at the moment.  I can either be radically accepting of it, or I cannot.  I have learned that I need to be radically accepting of the things that I am unable to change.  There are a great many things I cannot change.  And I guess I had some childish hope inside that they would. 

Like the big scratch I now have in the side of my car, I can’t change it, I can work on saving up money to get it fixed, but I cannot change the fact that it is there.  I can however accept it. 

It is a little bit of that control that I talked about in my last blog entry.  There are things I can control, and things I can’t.  I have learned that in taking control of the things I CAN change, can control, it has made me feel much more in control of other aspects of my life. 

I can control how I react to certain situations, and I can control the emotional child that I have allowed myself to revert to for so many months now.  I have two choices, to be accepting, or to not. 

I am chosing accepting, I am accepting my life, and my place in it.  I am also accepting my roles and responsibilities of the adult that I am… instead of the child that it is more comfortable to be. 

I already feel better, I feel like I have taken the reins of my own life instead of allowing others to control it. 

And I have found a little niche, a little one about 80 miles away from the place that I live, a place that feels like a vacation from the real world. 

A place where the acceptance of me is only validated by those that surround me.   Even the dogs… and there are four of them.  One of whom is a gigantic great dane that has taken quite a liking to me

Reflecting June 28, 2007

God I miss my computer…

And somehow I feel sufficiently pathetic for that being the case!  I am at my Dads house, on his computer, I asked if he minded if I got online.  He just sorta looked at me like, what?  You want to use our computer? 

He doesn’t even know how to turn it on.  Much less how addicting it can be.  He doesn’t understand how many hours can be wasted doing pretty much nothing while sitting in one spot.  To him TV is the high form of lazy entertainment.  Oh no, not me, I can’t even tell you what the newest TV shows are.

But I can tell you that my computer has been gone since Monday at 605 pm and I am not amused by it in the slightest! 

I have however, found out a great deal about myself in these last few days.  I am going to the gym on a regular basis!  Woo hoo for unlaziness. 

Most of all, I have been reflecting.  I have always been the type to take time to self reflect, really its one of the things I do best.  I can spend hours within the limits of my own mind and be perfectly alright with that.  I don’t really understand it, but as of late, I have learned not to judge it. 

In these few computerless days I have found my string of thoughts, and not told them to shut up, not distracted them away, just sort of let it come. 

I have learned not to judge myself, for who the hell is going to tell me that my way of thinking is wrong, except for me.  I don’t really understand where I got off thinking it was so wrong to begin with.  There is nothing ‘wrong’ with me.  I just don’t fit the norm. 

Who the hell wants to fit the norm anyway… sure as hell not me. 

I suppose for now, at least until I get out of this self reflective period in my life, perhaps forever, my blog shall turn into my place for my thoughts.  Well what a silly idea, isn’t that what it is anyway? 

In a way, I suppose, but often times I find myself wracking my brain for all those thoughts that go along with being adopted… and well… they are there.  But they don’t absorb everything.  Thankful for that, but really, I have discovered that I allow myself to feel these things, then also allow them to pass through.  DBT calls this the teflon mind… nothing sticks. 

I do not allow adoption to stick.  Oh yes, it sure as hell hurts at times but if I allow the pain to come, and then leave, it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad, its ok, and surprisingly enough… I am still dealing with it. 

Plus I have found our lovely adoptee forum.  I love it there… love that I have somewhere to stick my adoption poo poo and leave it be. 

So for now… this blog will really be… a moment in a thought.  A moment in the thoughts of me. 

Me.  Oh jeez… can I just say how much I have discovered that I absolutely REVEL in being alone?  Oh yes, revel in it. 

Yet, I don’t like to be lonely… explain that one to me! 

I just realized, that I have no idea how the hell I am going to get married, have children, anything that requires me to be around a person ALL the time. 

Married would be ok, married I could handle.  After all, there are people that I like to be around, really like to be around.  Sure they are very few and far between… but they exist.  I could get married as long as my husband respects my need for space, respects my need for that ‘me’ time.  Meaning me myself and I… not me myself and I in the same room with someone else.  Oh no, that won’t work.  I need a husband that won’t mind being in the same house, just not in the same god damned room all the time. 

Oh and if he could be quiet… that would be great too. 

But children?  I don’t quite know about children.  Children don’t really go away, they don’t leave you alone.  And I can’t come and go as I please. 

I suppose, during this reflective period, I have learned I am not ready for children, at least not right now.  (Not that I was going to pop them out anyway) but really… no need for them at this moment.  Nope not at all, I have enough of them at work that I can borrow… then return them home again.

Its just silly, this need to be alone.  Well I suppose it isn’t silly, I guess its just me.  I just have this no people attitude. 

I thought I didn’t like people, but I discovered that isn’t really the case either.  I like people enough, I am just a sort of quiet observer, I like to observe people, but not interact with them.  Interaction means a whole big bunch of things, things I don’t wish to have.  I also don’t like to be too close to people.  Closeness is a form of interaction, even if it isn’t communicative, its interaction.  I prefer to observe in a place where people are unlikly to observe me.  Therefore getting rid of that whole interaction thing.  But people by and large are ok… there are still plenty I don’t like.  But there are plenty I do like as well.  Things people say, people do, that make me smile and give me a greater hope for humanity.  In my quiet and observant way…

Perhaps I really am strange, ah well, strange I may be.  However, I am nothing short of me. 

Ahh I could write forever but I fear it would be terribly long and boring.  So I shall save more of my moments in thoughts in the next time I can hijack someone Else’s computer.  (god I HATE dial up!!  Spoiled anyone?) 

So for now… I go back to my internet free world… leave the house full of people, and children.  And go back to the things I can tolerate being with me all the time. 

My animals… gosh I love my pets… they are awesome. 

Maybe I will just become one of those crazy old cat ladies… wouldn’t that be fun!?