Adoption Demons

Maybe it was because I spent almost two hours on last Tuesday evening talking to a reporter about how my seemingly very progressive agency was using acceptable, but subtly coercive tactics to point me only relinquishment, and it weakened my inner stone wall. Maybe it is because it's almost Mother's Day as well and between having lost my own mother many years ago, plus being a mother who lost one child to adoption and then, this year, having my second oldest pretty much out of the house, that got to me too. Most likely, I would have to blame the act of editing and rereading my own story that I posted on Friday about the actual act of giving birth to Max and then relinquishing him to adoption, but let me tell you...right now, this whole weekend, I have been a mess.

I can talk about and write about adoption from an outside perspective as a horrified, but knowledgeable, onlooker until the cows come home.

I can go on TV and speak in public and seem very composed, but when I do all that, I am not talking, necessarily, about me, I am not thinking about me, I am not remembering really, what it was like. I know why, too. Letting that pain back into my life does not lend itself to really being able to live well and function. Friday night, I managed to pull myself back together, reigned it all in and acted normal. I went to be and blessed sleep, but woke up Saturday feeling foul and not able to do much but scrub my house something fierce. I think I was even angry when I was gardening, which is not my usual routine at all. Saturday night, more of the same. Rye went out and I sat in front of my computer at odds with the world. Nothing amused me, not appealed to me, nothing good could come out of me either.. I couldn't even write. I felt sad and lonely and on the verge of tears for no reason at all. Sunday, still no better at all. My day was spent ripping wall paper boarder down from Garin's bedroom which alone could have been emotionally triggering. Since he is now, officially living at his father's a town over, and since I am a cold evil woman who recognizes a need for space, the room is being redone to a playroom/guest room. Still, it was the first room that I finished in this house when I bought it 12 years ago.. and though not totally immature, the border of vintage bi-level planes torn to shreds made me feel sad because, with months away from 18, the "baby" I did get to raise, is a baby no longer. So I ripped.. and I thought.. and for some reason this one one of the only years I was actually conscious of it being "Birthmother's Day" on Birthmother's day, and that kept on running through my head. I felt like I had a major case of PMS.. you know when you KNOW that there is no reason to be upset, but something is going to push you over the edge anyway; but I was no where near that point in my cycle.

I still had a tremendous deep sadness within me.

So much so that when Rye, a bit hungover from a night out with the boys, asked me if I was OK all I could do is say no.. and lay there and be held..trying not to break into huge sob, yet unable to stop silent tears from leaking out. It was like this smouldering cry just burning constantly through out my day, my weekend, really.. my life. The adoption demons had me in their grip.

And all I really wanted yesterday was my own mother.

I wanted to cry to her and have her tell me that everything would be alright. Of course, it WON'T EVER BE ALL RIGHT.. and I cannot ever be held by my own mother again and that just makes it worse.

No one really can make it better. I am a birthmother. My son was adopted. This is my life.

So I have successfully identified the causes, the reaction and the deep feeling behind this feeling and it still won't go away. I can't shake it. I am afraid of it getting to me too much and then, I know, I withdraw again away from adoption and all things least I get depressed again and watch TV. Then I feel unproductive and even worse because I am not doing the things I should.

• I keep on thinking of a post that I wrote a long time ago and is now gone on Anti-Adoption Insight's where I compared living with this grief like living with a volcano, slowly smouldering, pressure always building under the surface. I am angry that I can't find it again because I remember it being pretty good.
• I kept on thinking that it was birthmother's day and I hated that it was my day.
• I kept on thinking that I know why women relinquish and never speak of it again, never come out of the birthmother closet and reject their own children when their lost adoptees find them.
• I kept on thinking how I never did finish the three part series that I was writing on Birthmothers and grief because I couldn't handle feeling the grief again.
• I kept on thinking that all these people I know who look up to me in some way and say things about how strong I am don't know what the hell they are talking about.
• I just kept on thinking and I hated every thought that ran through my head.

And so I continued to rip down wallpaper. Scarlett kept on coming in to help and periodically babbled her fool head off about 8 year old things. I wrote this post in my head and it made much more sense and was better written then, but I'm getting to it now. I'm still in a foul nasty mood. I could cry if the dog looked at me wrong because I bought her the wrong dog food and she's a picky nasty bitch.

I think it gets me even madder that I have to recognize that this is an adoption aided affliction.

I hate admitting to any kind of defeat. I am not about being a victim. Tell me what ought to happen or what I should be doing and I go the other way just to prove you wrong. I know I am suppose to be damage just like all us birthmothers who didn't get over it, but dammit, I think I still have residual "not me" kool aid in my veins. Aren't I stronger than this? Wasn't is suppose to be the thing that made a "good life" possible?' Wasn't adoption suppose to be the grand solution? So how come something that happened over half my life ago still has such a hold on me?

Because I tell you.. remembering, really remembering how it felt on a emotional level, just brings it all back so much it's almost impossible to deal with.

I don't know how in God's good name I lived through it. I don't know how any of us do. When I think about it now, my reaction is pure horror. I don't know why I made myself go through with it. I don't know why I ever even thought it was a good idea. I mean I do KNOW the reasons, the ideals, the situation, the family, the pressure, the agency... but I don't KNOW..I just don't know how I actually did it.. and I don't know how I lived through it and I don't know how sometimes I can continue to do so for the rest of my life.

I don't want adoption in my life.

I want to stomp my felt and throw punches at wall and kick and scream until I get my way. I want it to STOP. And I keep on thinking of the title quote in Nancy Spungen's mothers book about Sid Vicious and heroin and the Sex Pistols and Nancy getting murdered under the bathroom sink at the Chelsea Hotel: And I Don't Want to Live This Life! I call do-over! I cry foul! I call Bullshit. I say Unfair! I'd like another try please. And this time.. I won't go near adoption with a ten foot pole. Where's my growing comfort and sense of peace? It's taking a long, long time.