I talked to Stacey the other day. She told me she named me. I had a name. Before I was Joanna Claire, I was someone else. I was Jade Katharine. Jade. Jade Katharine. I wonder if I would have lived differently under that name. I wonder if one suits me better than the other. How much different would everything be? I had a name. The woman who caarried me in her womb for nine months gave me the name Jade Katharine. Shouldn't I respect that somehow? The woman who raised me for 20 years gave me the name Joanna Claire. Should I not respect that as well?
Why aren't there rules for this? Someone should get it together and write me out a manual as to how I'm supposed to wrap my mind around the fact that I am not who I thought I was. I am not who anyone thinks I am. I was someone else before I was Joanna Claire Fisher. Why is it impossible to acknowledge that? Who wants to start a book on chapter two? My parents' lives may have started when I was adopted, but my life started before that. There is this whole other world that I came from that no one will talk about. Not unless it's behind closed doors.
I feel like I'm living two separate lives. The one where I live like nothing is different. I am of this family that I was raised in, everything is normal. Ha! What a facade! Then my other life. The one that I'm only allowed to delve into when no one is looking. When I'm all alone in my room and I pull out the box of letters from Stacey, and I pour over faded pictures of a life of "could-have-been's", and "what if's". Now, what happens when those worlds collide? What happens on that day in July? The day that I have been waiting for my entire life...will my family even acknowledge it? Will my friends? Will I be at that airport, experiencing something so spectaular all alone? Will I be allowed to talk about it when it's over? Will I be allowed to cry with someone? Mourn the loss of my mother -- the woman who gave me life -- the loss that no one will recognize as an acutall LOSS. Don't you think I deserve the time to mourn that? Or will I be asked, without words, to not tap into that?
What if Stacey gets here, and doesn't like what she sees? What if she doesn't like my family, my friends? What if she feels completely excluded? What if she sees me and hops right back on that plane?
