9.25.09

i've been struggling over this post for about a week. i'm sure of my forthcoming posts will have me struggling. and that's okay.

my therapist knows nothing, and i mean nothing, about adoption. at all. zippo. nada.

i'm extremely frustrated. i've spent time, for which i'm paying money, educating her about adoption. basics.

for instance, two sessions ago we came upon the subject of the Kiddo's name change.

"...and then they named him W- and i had named him Jacob...."

"can they do that? change his name?"

"---------------------------- (my immediate thought: ohmygodicantbelievethis)"

do i expect my therapist to know everything about adoption? of course not. however.

the last session we had was 90% about adoption, where previous sessions had been a whirlwind of incidents spanning my emotional lifetime. about 15 minutes in, i could already feel my jaw start to set, my back teeth pressing together in steeling myself for the next 30 minutes. it was maddening.

driving south on my way home, i starting weighing the new relationship with my therapist. Carol has been mighty helpful so far in showing me some things that i hadn't expected. even though i've been hashing and rehashing events for years, i've clearly overlooked the obvious. so for that, she's been pretty great.

but its been pretty clear pretty quickly that i'm going to have problems talking about adoption. and i need to be able to do that. i don't want to dread therapy. i need to be honest. a conundrum.

reflux

when my alarm sounded at 230 this morning, i went about my usual routine. while shaking myself from sleep, i checked in on faceb**k and my feed reader, and found a great freakin' post from Claud. and while i've been at work this morning, her "#1" has been on my mind. actually, reading her post again, i find myself both nodding and near tears at all 29.

1. I wish I knew that relinquishing my child to adoption was not a one time event that I would recover from by the most major life altering "decision" that would alter the very course of my existence for the rest of my life.

uh, yeah.

i believed what everyone told me. that i'd get on with my life, that i'd have more kids (as if that would somehow negate my firstborn), that i'd "recover" and "bounce back" as if i'd been ill.

what i didn't know is that i'd second guess every single important decision that followed, that i'd be unsure in my own abilities, thoughts, wants and needs. that my already low self esteem, while momentarily boosted by doing "the right thing", would stay below sea level when the kool aid effects subsided. that i'd find a lifetime of self loathing, self doubt, self directed anger that manifested in a thousand different ways.

i'm not as succinct as Claudia at the moment. there's no neatly tied "wrap up" to this post. just like there's no clean and pretty ending to this adoption stuff.

bus pass

one of the issues i've been struggling with, both adoption and non-adoption related, is inconsistency in relationships.  i allow myself to become subjected to other people's emotional whims and needs when convenient.

sure, before The Kiddo was born,  i called the shots in the adoption.  i picked the couple, i set the guidelines for what occurred in the hospital.  i terminated my own rights, signed away consents.  so we're talking about 3 months from soup to nuts.  we can round that off to a safe 5 months if you add Pennsylvania's "40 day waiting period" from the time that the TPR is signed. five months of "being in control of my son's adoption".  five months.

when i hold that thought parallel to what i've been experiencing over the past five years, it's a drop in the bucket.  a blip on the map of my psyche.  once i actually earned the "birthmother/first mother" label by signing the TPR, what i thought/wanted ceased to matter.  after the 40 days, irrevocable.  

 the last visit i had with the Kiddo didn't turn out so well in the end.  it was humiliating, embarrassing, demoralizing and left me fairly hopeless.  i've been re-playing scenes from that visit for almost three years now, trying to decipher how i could have salvaged that afternoon.  and the fact of the matter is, i couldn't.  as the recipient of Betty's blindsiding fury, i don't believe it was necessarily about me.  not that i've had any opportunity to discern the truth of the matter. consider it all speculation.

relationships are fucking hard.  even the best ones.  they all require compromise, work.  disappointment is imminent. throughout my life, even if i knew i hadn't done something "wrong", i'd grovel to make everything smooth and "nice".  most often at the expense of my own self worth, which would chip away with each event.  this happened at the end of my last visit, when pushed to my emotional limit, i cried out "you already have my son, what else do you want from me? can't we just start over?".  no, there are no "do-overs". words can't be retracted, time travel isn't available.

but that was almost three years ago.  i feel a bit differently.  i've had to make it a bit more black & white.  what's looming is the simple "are you on the bus? or off the bus?".  i can't feel like the perpetually revolving door.  not for myself, nor for the Kiddo.  and i don't make any apologies for that.  perhaps it is time to walk away from several relationships, including the Kiddo and his family.  this hasn't been an easy conclusion to reach.  it isn't what i wanted when i chose adoption, certainly not how i envisioned what i've come to describe as an "ongoing social experiment".  

should the Kiddo want to contact me at some point, on his own terms, it will be a pleasant surprise.  truth be told, i don't imagine holding my breath waiting for that day.