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