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!?

So Sad :( June 25, 2007

I am going without internet   I have to send my baby, I mean my laptop, in to get fixed.

I am going to have to be without it for like two weeks… Oh goodness, I can’t even imagine.  Its going to be tough.

But I am going to get it back all shiny pretty and new!!!!!

I am going to try and check in… at least after I have my ‘meet Jessie’ picnic this weekend at my bio-dads.  Thats going to be interesting.

So I shouldn’t be compleatly gone… and you know… there are libraries.

Gosh I gotta go to the library???  Yuck.

So ttfn, taa taa for now!

Looking out for that hole in the road June 23, 2007

There are a great many times when I wish life were easier.  A great many times when perhaps I just wish I didn’t have to live it at all. 

The good moments seem so few and far between, and the bad ones stick out in my head like a fat person at an anorexia clinic. 

This past year/two years has been the hardest of my life.  Probably because I was actually in ‘reality’ for them. 

With Borderline personality disorder, you spend so much of your life not in reality, that when reality hits you, its something like a ton of bricks.  Its scary, and its hard.  But I am learning to deal. 

I am learning to find myself in this mixed up weird life I have. 

I thought my whirlwind was over, it turns out it wasn’t.  I am hoping to god that it ends soon.  Because I am at my wits last end.  Unfortunately, just about every relationship I have is suffering because of it.  Mostly the one with my Meemo. 

I stand on a fine line lately, a fine line between staying in the life I have fought so hard to create with myself through therapy, and falling into the hole that is Borderline (BPD).  

Sometimes lately, its just been too damn easy to fall in that hole.  Its safer, its more understood, and I know what to expect.  However, for all its safety, its also torture.  Safe torture, but torture none the less. 

However, staying OUT of that hole isn’t as easy as it seems.  I spent a great many years of my life in that hole. 

I have a lot of things going on in my life.  Financially, I am in a hole… a big, big huge hole.  I bought a new car, my adad told me he would help me with it.  I knew I couldn’t afford it, he wanted me to have it.  Now I am finding myself between a rock and a hard place, I don’t want to keep asking my adad for money.  But I just can’t do this.  I made my first car payment, and bounced my rent check, have NO idea where I am going to get the money for all the rest of my bills.  The stress of this, and knowing I need to get a new job, is unbelievable.   

I have met my bdad, he’s a great guy.  But there is that hole again, that borderline hole I want to fall in.  That torturous hole, I almost want to scream in his face, get away while you can!!!  I know I am better than this, I know that I can do this, I can form a relationship with him.  Why not?  What is so wrong with me really, that I wouldn’t be able to.  Oh yeah, everything. 

He wants me to meet his family, his WHOLE family, I am really scared.  A.  I don’t like crowds of people.  B.  I am scared.  I will be the center of attention, and what if they don’t like me. 

I am trying to reform a relationship with my amom, so far its working pretty well.  I have come a long way with that. 

Mostly, I just wish I knew how to let myself out of the hole, once and for all.  I wish I knew how to let myself shine through instead of being so afraid of everything. 

It is when I am scared the most, that I trip and fall the most.  When I make the most mistakes, and when I do things wrong. 

When I look for the advise of others instead of trusting my own instincts. 

I have had so many trust issues along the way, and I realized, that first and foremost, I need to trust myself.  But how?  How does one begin to do this? 

I have to learn to open up, while still holding myself together.  I have to learn to separate my fears from the person that I am.  I have to learn that its ok not to remain where its safe, its ok not to remain in that hole.  Take risks… don’t be so afraid of life and others. 

Don’t be so afraid of screwing up!  I think if I tried LESS hard to screw up… I would screw up less!  Its when I am trying the hardest that everything backfires on me.  Maybe I should just try harder to be me. 

Its almost like that hole is my protection, but its silly, because its torture, it hurts me more than anything. 

I feel so very often like it is the world that hurts me, but in reality, I hurt myself more than anyone else does.  

I just wish I knew, really knew, how to change all this.  I wish I knew a concrete way to avoid falling in that hole.  I am making others around me crazy… people at work, my Meemo, my friends, my therapist, everyone.  My inability to get my feet back on the ground is affecting those around me, and thats just not fair.  My own issues need to stop affecting my relationships with others.  And its so easy to lay blame, but really, the blame lays with me.  I am the one who is letting things affect me.  I am the one who is letting certain feelings overtake me.  I just wish I knew how to get my life all back in order again. 

I need to get my grip back on all the aspects in my life, the problem is, I just don’t know how.  I don’t know how to right everything I have knocked over.  I don’t know how to fix all my wrongs. 

Mostly, I need to learn how to keep them from happening again.  I need to learn how to stop falling into that hole thats there.  I need to learn how to see it so that I can avoid falling into it. 

I think I am so busy looking backwards, so busy concentrating on the past, on the things I can’t control, that I miss whats right in front of me.  Maybe it is as simple as just turning around. 

Concentrating on what I can control instead of what I can’t.  Concentrating on the road ahead of me, instead of the road behind, so when that damn hole comes again, I don’t fall in. 

DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER! June 17, 2007

I am so tired, I need to sleep.  But I can’t. 

I just keep thinking about the events of the day, the events of my life.  Today was fathers day, and I spent it with my actual father. 

He is truly an amazing person, he really is.  He looks at me like he loves me, he hugs me like he loves me.  He has all these plans for me to meet the family, meet all these people.

God I just don’t know if I am ready for this.  I don’t know if I am ready for this love, ready for this fear.  Ready for this relationship. 

I feel like waving a big red flag in front of his face….

WARNING: Has abandonment issues

WARNING: Has attachment issues

WARNING: Really sucks at relationships

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!  DANGER!

That paralyzing fear, that fear of being not liked, that fear of being rejected.  That fear of him discovering I am not the cute happy and bubbly person he seems to love so much.  I am so much more than that.  I am so so scared. 

I promised myself it was going to be different this time.  I promised myself I wasn’t going to love him, I wasn’t going to get attached.  I wasn’t going to care like I care with my Meemo.  I wasn’t going to allow myself to do this all over again. 

All I wanted was a picture. 

I am happy he likes me, I am happy that he seems to love me.  I am happy that his family wants to meet me.  I am happy that they are all welcoming me with open arms. 

I just don’t know if I can do this.  More people = more opportunity for disappointment.  More opportunity for pain.  More opportunity to screw things up like I am just so freaking good at doing.  I am not good at connecting.  In fact, for the most part, I just don’t do it.  I don’t connect, I don’t let people in.  Its too hard, its too scary, but sometimes, my heart gets ahead of my brain.  My heart takes a chance that my brain isn’t ready to take.

My heart is already taking this chance, and damn it, my brain isn’t ready for this!!!

My brain is still trying to wrap itself around my Meemo. 

I spent the weekend dog sitting her dog.  Well really, I spent the weekend in a house I didn’t have to fuss with, with animals that just wanted me to love them.  What more could I ask for?  I ended up going on a little mini cleaning spree… not real sure where the hell that came from, I suppose sometimes it just comes.  I am very strange like that.  I suppose I was trying to distract myself from feelings and thoughts I didn’t want to feel.  Things I don’t understand, and I suppose I never will.  Trying to place how I feel about everything. 

I realized, above all, that I feel very out of control. 

I don’t like that one bit. 

I am trying to regain control of everything. 

My life has just been a spiral, and every time I think I have gotten everything somewhat settled, things blow up again.  So much for calm.  Maybe I just get bored when its calm?  I don’t understand it. 

In all reality, I am still reeling from buying a new car… god that was only weeks ago.  Still trying to figure out how I am going to afford it.  How I am going to work this out.  Realizing that my job just doesn’t pay enough, and its stressing me out too much. 

Realizing that I need to get a new one. 

Realizing that I need to leave the children I have helped raise for the last six years.  ( thats my job, working in a child care )

Then there is my dad… My dad, my dad, my dad.  He is my dad.  I need a name for him, a name like Meemo.  Because B. is too impersonal, and dad doesn’t work to separate my now two fathers. 

And oh the emotions from this!

Oh… and I adopted a cat today… yep, a cat.  Why not throw something else in?  A cat!  I already have a cat, and a rabbit, in a very small apartment. 

But B., L. (his wife) and I went into the pet store.  And I saw kitty. 

We were in the pet store to buy duck food, there is a duck pond near where I live, and we went there and fed the ducks bread.  Well we all wanted to feed them some more (there are a lot of ducks) so we went to buy duck food.  And I came out with a cat instead. 

A ten year old, tiger striped cat named Kitty. 

Kitty the cat. 

My Cuppy, my cat, is less then amused.  Oh well, for another day. 

I think it was because I needed control.  I don’t know how that even makes sense, but I needed some control.  I needed to make a decision that I could control.  I wanted that cat.  Something about Kitty spoke to me, spoke to me more than any other cat in a cage in a shelter ever has.  And there was nothing about her that would make her stand out.  She just stood out to me.  I wanted her, and I adopted her.  With my father, the one who made me, standing right there. 

I wonder if he thinks I am nuts.  The funniest thing, I don’t think he does. 

I even let him into my apartment, my messy, off limits apartment.  He didn’t mind, he didn’t say anything, just laughed and said, yep, you fit right in with us. 

God I am so not ready for this!!  My heart wants to be ready, but my head is screaming back off Jessie.  BACK UP!  Do not love, DO NOT!

Love = pain. 

My heart is already winning. 

Ah the complications of life June 13, 2007

I have so many thoughts, and sometimes I find it hard to find a place to start. 

My brain in a way jumbles everything together, so that there isn’t much of a logical order.  How suprising! Given that nothing in my life is organized. 

I am finding it hard to organize my feelings in my head.  My feelings about my bparents that is.  It used to be just my bmom, my Meemo, that I was having a tough time organizing.  Now however, I have my bdad thrown in there too.  And well, he is quite amazing.  Really, I look at both of my parents, my bparents, and am astonished at how amazing they are.  And how much like ME they are!  Or I should say, how much I am like them. 

I am like my parents. 

I WANT to be like my parents. 

Some people might look at them and say… Why?  What makes them so special.  What makes them so different from every other person on the face of this planet. 

If I listed them, the list would go on and on.  Someday I shall, make my list of things I love about my parents.  Who woulda thought that right?  My list of things I love.  And boy do I love. 

Right now I am just trying to figure out where it all fits.  I was working on that place for my Meemo, and I had to throw my dad in there too.  In a lot of ways I am happy that I did that when I did.  It gave me time to get to know my Meemo before I threw my dad in, but it is also giving me time to figure it ALL out, when they are still both so new. 

Their relationship was an interesting one.  I suppose I still don’t know the details, but I didn’t have a clue as to much of it until I made that phone call.  I stirred up emotions, memories, thoughts, on all parties.  Dad, Mom, daughter.  All that are involved.  And I sat on a park bench with the two of them and just watched the look in their eyes. 

Watched the look of people who once held each others hearts, and didn’t even have a clue how much. 

I felt like an outsider, but at the same time I felt like I fit.  Like the last puzzle peice was put there, and suddenly I was surrounded by those who made me whole.  Surrounded by the two people who made my life possible to begin with. 

Two people who have come a long, long way since those days.  And that parrallel life, once again, flashed before my eyes. 

I forget how much adoption affects EVERYONE, not just the adoptee, and not just the ADOPTION aspect of it.  It is so easy to put that label on it, adoption.  So easy to say, oh these feelings are from adoption, but they are so much deeper than that.  So much more complicated.  Its about life, its about people. 

Its so easy for me to pretend I am the only one in pain.  I could see otherwise in my fathers eyes.  My fathers tear filled eyes as he looked at his own flesh and blood 24 years after she was born.  As he handed me a picture of a sister I have never met, who amazingly, looks just like me.  In my parents eyes, when they met again, in the presence of that child that brought them back together in the first place.  Pain, joy and wonderment. 

Oh how amazingly complicated life can be. 

I am meeting my fathers wife, for the first time this sunday.  I am spending some of Fathers day with the man who can biologically lay claim to me in fatherhood.  I am spending Fathers day with my father, and his wife…

I am scared.  I was talking to my Meemo about it, about the ‘enemy complex’

Maybe that sounds strange, I know she isn’t an enemy.  In fact, she seems really really nice.  She has already emailed me welcoming me to the family.  Talked to me a bit on how she feels, and how she understands how I must feel about this whole thing.  About how overwhelming it is for both of us. 

Yet another stranger, and yet, our lives are connected, without either one of us ever knowing. 

I don’t think of her as an enemy, but I have that ‘enemy complex’ there none the less. 

I have that, oh, ok, so your my dads ‘other’ girlfriend.  Only he married her.  He married her while my Meemo was pregnant with me.  And my Meemo was the ‘other’ girlfriend… not her. 

I guess that breaks my heart, and I don’t even know who for.  It just hurts my heart.  It hurts because I am partial to my Meemo, I am very loyal to her.  She is, after all, my mother. 

Maybe I am just strange, and need to get over it. 

I am however, compleatly willing to give this woman a chance, she is giving me one.  She is accepting me, because she accepts him, and I am a part of him. 

I accept my father, so I accept her too, she is also, a part of him.  She is very much a part of all my siblings, all the other people who also share my genes. 

Its just hard, more emotions, more feelings.  More things I am not so sure what to do about.  I guess sometimes it just helps to spit them out here. 

How nice it is to be accepted June 10, 2007

Wow.

Thats all I can say is wow.  When I met my Meemo, I figured I had it all figured out, the person that I was.  Where I came from, what I was like. 

Where I belonged. 

And while we are scarily alike, we look alike.  Think alike, have so many of the same traits, the same so many things. 

I am also like my Dad. 

I am like my sister E., I even look like her.  Its hard to explain, because YES I do look like my Meemo, but there are things about E. that are like her. 

Her body shape is just like mine, her facial expressions, facial shape.  Her face is round, like mine.  Her nose, her expressions.  I guess her personality is a lot like me too. 

My Meemo has never been emotional, never gotten mushy.  I could never figure out why she wasn’t and I was. 

I know why now. 

I get that from my Dad, they are emotional, mushy, lovey, cuddly.  They are like me in those ways. 

And my Dad?  He likes me!  He likes me for me, doesn’t get bothered by my little quirks… doesn’t even seem to notice them really, just keeps on going like its perfectly normal. 

He doesn’t make me feel weird, or like I have to prove anything, like I have to worry about anything.  He just likes me.  He’s just there. 

He wants to know me, he wants to be with me.  I feel so lucky, I don’t know how I got blessed with this, I really don’t. 

So many things in my life have been so hard, and I have fought, for so long.  To be myself, to find myself.  To find my strengths and find my power. 

I found a lot of it with my Meemo, I found the rest of it with B.  My Dad. 

He doesn’t look like me, but he has my nose. 

And its like he already knows me.   Even his kids said, oh my god, she’s E.  I look that similar to her. 

I feel so vindicated, not only is this man like me, but he LIKES ME!  He doesn’t expect anything from me, he isn’t disappointed in what I wasn’t.   He was so happy to meet me, and he hugged me so tight, even cried.  I am so not used to that, my adad never cries.  My adad doesn’t get mushy, he doesn’t get lovey, he is a man man, a macho man. 

This man isn’t embarrassed if my apartment is messy, thinks its funny that I have a ginormous cat, thinks its awesome that I like him back. 

He wants to have a picnic with the family, a ‘Meet Jessie’ picnic.

He wants me to go to the Renaissance festival with them. 

He wants me to be around. 

NOT what I expected when I made that phone call.

But NOT in the slightest disappointed either.  I am not used to people liking me, I am not used to this at all.  I am used to having to fight for me. 

Its nice not to have to fight. 

Its nice to be loved.  Its just nice. 

Butterflies anyone? June 10, 2007

Less than 11 hours now. 

In less than 11 hours, I will finally know what both of my biological parents look like. 

I will finally have the answers to my background, my biology.  The very core of who I am, that starts with the people who made me. 

This moment brings me back to some of the nerves and feelings I felt just months ago when meeting my biological mother.  Wondering what she was going to look like.  If she was going to like me.

Trying to breathe because it happened soooo fast. 

All of this happened so fast, it happened fast with her too.  I first heard from her on a Monday, talked to her on the phone that Tuesday, met that Saturday.  This all from the girl who NEVER actually wanted to MEET my family….

Just look at them. 

I never wanted to meet my dad either.  I just wanted a picture, I wanted to know what he looked like.  What his children looked like.  I didn’t want to meet him. 

Now that he is real, I have to admit, that thought has changed, just like it did with my Meemo.  Its like that first time you talk, they become a real person, then there is all that wonder.  Like who are they?  What are they like?

Its all so mysterious. 

I talked to him for the first time just this Wednesday, I got some balls, and I picked up the phone, called the number I thought might possibly be his.  It was.

Talked to his wife, who had no idea I even exsisted until that moment.  Told her that he knew my mother, and I really wanted to get in touch with him.  She asked me who my mother was, I told her, and it was that moment, whether she wants to deny it or not.  She knew who I was, and what I was calling for. 

I figured he would never get the message, I assumed he really didn’t want much of anything to do with me.  I wanted to tell his wife that I didn’t want, need, or expect anything from him.  Just a picture perhaps, but I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t be the one to ‘out’ him.  That was his responsibility, not mine.  I figured it would take forever to get the phone call back. 

I didn’t know it would be a matter of minutes.  And he called me from Washington D.C. 

He knew exactly who I was.  And he wanted to meet me, he wants me to meet his family.  Say’s his kids will be excited to find out they have a sister they never knew about. 

Oh yeah, I would be excited too… ok, sure.

He is coming all the way from his town, about an hour and a half away, to pick me up tommorow.  Tommorow at noon.  I am not as nervous as I was the day I met my Meemo.  But other than that, I can’t think of a time when I was this nervous before. 

I guess its kinda silly, but I fear the unknown.  And despite the fact that we are related, this is a huge unknown. 

But I will be there, I will be ready, with phone in hand waiting for the call to let me know he is here. 

I will