I let you get too close. I dropped my guard.

Is it strange that I kind of want to end this in a fight? I don't want to go gently into the night. I don't want to be quiet about it. I've been quiet for eight years. I've been a doormat for eight years. I want to go out of this kicking and screaming and scraping and sweating and bleeding. I want to scream until my throat is raw .. until every ounce of resentment and pent up anger and anguish is verbalized and vocalized.

I'm told that it will be a futile endeavour. That I'll end up hurt in the end anyway. That it will all backfire and I'll be made into the villain. That my emotions will be manipulated to suit the needs of the opposing party. The blame is always mine. Of course it is.

I wish my brain would let go of this.

somebody back east is sayin', "why don't she write?"

Classes have officially ended. Now all there is to do is sit and wait for this frakking snow to clear up enough that mum can come get me and bring me back to my home sweet CT. Snow is really the least of my troubles, though. The only way I can really describe my current state of mind is to tell you that I wish I were an ice cube..placed on the Thaw Thing. I want to melt.

I despise being in limbo. I feel like I need some sort of closure - whether that be positive or negative. I really don't care which. I'm just sick of limbo. Love me, hate me..acknowledge me, ignore me. Just pick a damn side and get on with it because this is bogus.

I just want to be home. I want to be out of here already. And this snow has got to stop.

"i frakked up, okay? i messed up. but it's all that i have. those people are my family. and none of us belong here."

I need advice. I thought I was done struggling with the idea of my grad show..but apparently I am not. Obvioulsy, because Portfolio III is a class that requires weekly images, I will have to come up with a project and see it through to the end of the quarter. But it seems the consensus among the professors is that they would prefer to see me hang the adoption project (which...needs a better name, btw). I would be all for it.. except that, assuming my parents will be attending the show, they may be the only ones who want to see it.

That, right there, is kind of a flag to me in the first place. No one wants to see it - no one wants to have to confront the issue of adoption. So...that would be all the more reason to force people to confront it, yes? But at the same time, remembering what I went through when I revealed it to my mother - in the privacy of my own apartment - makes me wanna throw up a bit. If she responded the way she did when it was hanging in my living room, I can't imagine what she might feel if it were hanging in a gallery while hundreds of people gawked at it.

I want to be fair, but I want/need to be true to myself. That was the first series I had to actually fight to produce, and as such..I want to honor it for what it is. It's a piece of myself - my own personal history displayed in words and photographs. But I can only imagine the threat it may appear as to my mother.

Guys. What the frak do I do?

"Patty would just as soon step on you as look at you.."

It has occured to me recently (last night while I flip flopped in my bed for three hours) that..through the whole of my adoption experience..I've had some amazing friends and some.. shall we say..that were lacking?

Despite any closeness that may have existed in other areas of my life/our friendship.. it seems that the aspect of adoption closes people off. And..I don't know why that is. Or maybe I do know, and I am choosing not to acknowledge it. Regardless of the reason, I'll never forget those who supported me - and likewise, those who did not.

15 steps

I'm steering clear of an adoption post today. I feel far too worn out by it all. There's actually quite a bit I could say, but frankly, I'm afraid of who might be reading. I don't like offending people - especially in a semi-public place (I say 'semi' because, really...who the hell even reads this).
I'm still trying to gather my thoughts on my graduation show. Professor Drucker, I'm sure (as well as many others - but I give Phil the credit because he raised me from a fledgling), will want to see the adoption project hung. And, frankly, so would I. But I don't think it will be possible since my parents plan on being there. Lord knows the last thing I need on my graduation day is the second releasing of what we now so fondly refer to as the 'atomic bomb'. I've thought of hanging my landscapes of Ireland - who can take issue with a lovely photograph of rolling hills and cloudy skies? But it feels so meaningless in comparison. And then I've got this gargantuan idea of illustrating the theories of relativity in photographs. But I'm worried the final images will come off as...something..more playful than serious - which is the exact opposite of what I want.
Too. Much. Thinking. For one morning alone. Why do I torture myself so?

us creative, deep thinking types, who crave connection with people who want nothing to do with us

I feel a little like a jerk cause I've not gotten back to Stacey's last two messages. I just have so little to say. I feel like I don't know what to say. I think she was planning on writing to my mom again - but I'm not sure my mom will go for it. Stacey wrote a pretty long letter to her a few months back..and my mom replied with little more than two paragraphs....in a huge ass font. I don't know that she really wants to know her. And as I've said, I've grown apathetic as of late. Presently, I don't care whether they know each other or not. A meeting between the two seems far off and near impossible, so I don't really see the point in surface conversation.

I've asked them to promise me that the first time they meet won't be at my wedding (again -extremely far off), but I have a feeling that will be exactly what happens. I'll have to remind myself to have a pistol holstered to my thigh, underneath my dress. God knows I'll need it.

maybe if we are surrounded in beauty, someday we will become what we see

Just finished mailing out photos for a client; now I'm waiting for a phone call to tell me that my website is going to be finished today. There are two weeks of school left, but I feel like my mind has checked out already. I can't seem to motivate myself to write this paper (maybe because the subject is the history of money..) and I know it's completely unfair to my partner. I just feel..a bit hollow after last night.

I tortured myself once again by going over what has or hasn't happened in the past - all of the rejections I've felt over the years. I feel like a horrible human being. I said I forgave - but I can't seem to forget. So doesn't that cancel it out completely? I just don't see how I'm supposed to forget these things.

I re-read my own post..from August of..2006(?). When I was so excited for Stacey to come visit..and she forgot. That seems like something one would not easily forget. In similarity, I was reminded of a holiday party I had been invited to by a friend. We agreed that I would wait for her call to finalize the plans - and I did. For three hours. Finally, two other friends and myself drove to the house where the party was being held, and there was said friend's car in the driveway. I shook it off as nothing because I have been accused of over-analyzing. I picked up my phone to call her and poke fun at yet another demonstration of her forgetfulness. I could see her through the window. She picked up her phone, stared at it for a moment, and turned it off. Her voicemail picked up. And I drove away angry and confused and hurt. She didn't forget. She didn't want me there.

That's fine. I pulled through. I always do. I just..don't understand.

I don't know that I want to show my adoption pieces at my graduation show. I don't know what to make of them anymore. I feel indifferent now. The photographs are peeling off of the canvas and the sunlight has begun to wash out the writing. And I have done nothing to stop it. I stand in front of them for hours some days..and I still do nothing. Sometimes I don't want to touch them at all. I treat them like some fragile antique that will crumble away to ash if I lay even a finger on them. Other times I just want to pitch them over the balcony. I've sat on the stairs and cried as I stare at them, having absolutely no idea what to do with myself - with them - with anything. Last winter when I produced those pieces, I could not have been more passionate about them if you lit a match under my ass. I risked everything to make them. I risked more than everything when I showed them. Now I wonder why I bothered. Nothing has changed. My mother still seems to reject the notion that there is a woman out there somewhere who gave birth to me. I have yet to see a reaction from Stacey. Nothing - even apart from the artwork. I can't seem to wrap my head around this.

There are some days when I just want to pull my hair out and scream at the top of my lungs. But on days like this...I want nothing more than to just..disappear. I just don't want to bother. Every attempt at fusing my two seperate worlds seems futile. I doubt that my two mothers will ever meet.

In three months I will be graduating. Since December of 2006 I have dreamed of this day - hoping with everything in me that Stacey would come. That she would be a part of this - as she should. But apathy is seemingly winning over any other emotion. She may come, she may not. And aside from birth-parent-drama, I don't know how my adoptive parents will fit in to this. My father, the accountant, the CEO, the CFO - he attended my 'Best of Quarter' ceremony in the summer, at which a piece from the adoption project was being shown. I knew it was a risk to show him the work, but I did. I wanted so desperately for him to know and understand it. But his comment was: "So you tore up a photo and glued it to this one? And wrote some psycho-babble over it? And this is what passes for art these days, hm? Well, nice job." I think that was the most twisted, back-handed compliment I have ever recieved. I try and picture them at my gallery show. A semi-formal opening, walls covered in fine art. And I'm terrified because I don't know what they'll say. Regardless of what I produce, I'm afraid they won't understand it. I'm afraid I'll be standing there surrounded by the professors who've..rasied me, in a sense..and my father will be hurling insults amidst his laughter. And I'm afraid he's right.

I worry I should have stayed at Eastern. My mother wants me to get an Education degree locally once I've graduated. I don't think they trust me. I don't think they trust that my photographs are enough. I worry it's me that's not enough.

I was a horrible student growing up. School didn't suit me. I always had an 'A' in art and music and literature - but these were classes "that didn't really count". I never had above a 'C' in any math class since...second grade. I used to throw up in the mornings I knew we were getting our report cards because I knew what 4:00 pm meant. 4:00 was the yell-at from mom. It would last about an hour, and I would have an hour break before my father came home. Round 2. I would throw up at night - sick with worry about the future, about school, about me. I worried that their predictions were true - and that I would end up working at McDonald's for the rest of my life. This is the first time in my life I've maintained a good GPA. This is the first time in my life I feel like I'm learning. But I'm still scared it's not enough.

hearts are broken every day

I just don't know...I can't put my finger on the exact..day..or month..or year when it happened. But...it's just a feeling to total..separation. I don't think we know each other anymore. Did we ever? I've asked myself that question innumerable times. But each time I come up with a different answer. The friendship was once completely selfless..and completely unconditional. Now I feel like..there is some unwritten criteria that I don't meet anymore.

There wasn't a secret in the world I wouldn't have shared. And this is not to say that there are now secrets, but it feels like a constant state of unknowing. And maybe there is nothing to know. It's just a strange feeling..to turn around and look back on what was and compare it to what is..and realize just how different things have become.

There was a time when I was so afraid of change that I'm sure I was suffocating. I would have done anything to make sure that nothing ever deviated from the ways I had once been set in. I've changed - we've both changed. Change is fine - change is good. But even after we promised to try..to make some semblence of effort to keep in touch - whatever medium - my palms are upturned and empty. And I'm struggling with myself as to what that means. I don't know what I'm asking. I don't know what I want - or if I want anything more than what it is. I'm just confused.

I feel like I don't fit into that "group" anymore. I don't even know what that "group" is, except that..I don't belong there..wherever "there" is. I just want answers. I want dialogue. I feel like I'm being avoided - like I'm a burden. I feel like I'm not immediately needed. Like a backup.

...a backup. I was a backup. They couldn't have their own child and I was their backup. Plan B. C, even. I...don't know why this is surfacing now...why it didn't dawn on me before. Maybe this isn't an issue of friendship or communication or wants or needs. Maybe it's something else. Maybe this is just another area of my life that adoption has spread to.

elephants{adoptee's} aint got no feelings; they're made of rubber!

So, I'm sitting around, minding my own buisness (still trying to stay warm/alive) - and yes. I'm watching Dumbo. (BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY THING ON, OK?) And...I..started balling. Why on earth does Disney feel the need to do this!? First of all - those clowns are scary. And mean. And secondly? I seriously cannot take that scene where Dumbo's all sad and lonely, so the mouse brings him to visit his mom, who's chained up in a little cart, and she swings him in her arms and sings. Like, I literally melted off the couch.

And - obvs, I'm biased. But I wondered if anyone else ever made that connection to adoption? To how the mom is chained up, kept away from him...and how he's forced to keep performing in the (FREAKING SCARY) circus and go on like nothing was the matter. UGH. And when they have to part again - and he slids off her trunk and kind of just slumps away while she waves from behind her bars. It's so sad. I can't stop crying. Does this mean My fog is...clearing?

On "The Middle" - and how I'm stuck in it.

First, I would like to preface this post by saying that this has been the source of serious conflict within me for years. I am caught between two seriously conflicting views of which I feel that there is no right place for me to be.

On one hand, I am taught by my faith and my religion that abortion is wrong, a sin against God, and the destruction of a human life: murder. This would be easy enough for me to accept as truth and move on were I not adopted under the circumstances that I was. My first mother was fifteen years old when she gave birth to me. She chose not to abort - a decision which, if I were to place myself in her position, I could only hope I would make. But how can I know what I would choose to do? Fifteen is so young and my mother endured many complications due to her age. But she did it. She carried me to term and delivered me and placed me for adoption.

I am certainly not about to say that being adopted is easy. It isn't and it never has been. The separation of mother and child is horrific and ugly and painful. The wounds are deep and will never fully heal. The system of adoption is corrupt. It too is horrific and ugly and painful. And those who have been effected by adoption directly tend to take the position that no one should have to fall prey to that system - they tend to take the position that it is the mother's right to choose whether or not she maintain her pregnancy.

The issue I have with this - with both arguments - is that I am caught between both of these positions. I am adopted. I know the misery that an adopted child lives in, knowing that they are stranger in their own home, that they wake up every morning and ask God - or whatever being they believe in - why it had to be them. Why did my mother leave me? Why did my mother decide that she did not want to keep me? But simultaneously, how can I be expected to also feel that a mother should be able to choose to end her pregnancy? If my mother had decided that at fifteen years of age she simply could not give me the life she wanted me to have under her care, and that adoption was out of the question because of the magnitude of pain I would endure, where would that leave me? Where DOES that leave me?

Which position is the "right" one for me to take up? How can I be both anti-adoption and pro-life? How can ANY adoptee take either position? What is worse? Living as a stranger in a strange family that is not your own? Or not living at all?

on brokenness

I can remember little-to-nothing of my life before age 6 or 7. I wonder if that's odd. It seems a bit old to me to not have any memory of anything transpiring before that age. What memories I do have of that age are scattered. Nothing coherant. I remember playing outside, always. Always running around, always building. I remember taking a liking to the word 'contraption'. I would try desperately to use it at least once a day. And if I found good enough reason for it, I would repeat the sentance twice, sometimes three times just to hear that word. Odd. I was an odd kid.

Maybe it's just the analyzer in me, but I couldn't help but wonder if my adoption was revealed to me on some specific day of some specific year prior to what I can remember...and perhaps that is why I can't remember. I've always said that my parents told me all along that I was adopted because I could not remember the day I found out. But really, how much sense does that make? Would you hold your month-old baby, rocking her to sleep, singing her a lullaby and just before you lay her down in her cradle, you kiss her on the forehead and whisper in a dreamy loving voice, "You're adopted. You didn't come from me. You were chosen, you are special."  So how early do you begin engraining that in your child's mind? How long had they been engraining it in mine? And is that the reason I cannot remember?

One thing that I do remember - despite its depressing nature - is always feeling slightly out of place. Though my parents did a wonderful job raising me, I always felt like a guest in my own home. I was an emphatic apologizer. I still am. If someone were to bump into me, I would apologize. And it still happens. I tried (and failed) to be the wonder child. I was a good kid, of course. I never did anything crazy...always stayed where I was supposed to - I followed instructions like it was my sole purpose on earth. But my grades were never up to par. My father is a CFO. His father was an engineer. My grandfather on my mother's side is a chemical engineer and holds numerous patents in his field.  My aunts are chemists and doctors and my uncles are businessmen and business owners. I - a curly haired, pale skinned non-math brained dancer/artist/general free spirit - was lost in a family of straight haired, olive skinned math brain engineer/chemist/general world changers.

I used to hate it when people said I looked like my dad. They would see my blue eyes and his, and immediately gush over how much resemblance there was. Why is it that outsiders must always attempt to find something familiar in the adopted child? Why aren't her differences celebrated? Why can't someone just say to the adopted child, "my goodness...look at that head of hair. You must get that from your natural mother." The fact is, I looked nothing like my father. Or my mother. Why would I? My sister, on the other hand... [my parents, thinking they could not conceive, adopted myself and my brother, and then went on to have two biological children of their own. Yeah, I said it. 'Of their own'.] ...she looks like the perfect unison between my mother and father. She is the wonder child. Sporty, petite, good grades - straight A's - plays everything under the sun that involves a ball. We jokingly fight over who is the 'favorite', but in all seriousness - I know exactly where the distinction lies. I fall short where she excells because she is their blood.