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.

from A.M. Homes

"To be adopted is to be adapted; to be amputated and sewn back together again. Whether or not you regain full function, there will always be scar tissue."

"In my dreams, my birth mother is a goddess, the queen of queens, the CEO, the CFO, and the COO. Movie-star beautiful, incredibly competent, she can take care of anyone and anything. She has made a fabulous life for herself, as ruler of the world, except for one missing link - me."

"And this year is something entirely new, more awful, like going back to scratch and sarting all over again, a new birthday with an old child, the first with four parents instead of two, a schizoid dividing of the zygote further than the gods intended it to go."

"The phone call is thrilling, flirty as a first date, like the beginning of something. There is a rush of curiosity, the desire to know everything at once. What is your life like, how do your days begin and end? What do you do for fun? Why did you come and find me? What do you want?
Every nuance, every detail means something. I am like an amnesiac being awakened. Things I know about myself, things that exist without language, my hardware, my mental firing patterns - parts of me that are fundamentally, inexorably me are being echoed on the other end, confirmaed as a DNA match. It is not an entirely comfortable sensation."

"I go to the gym. Overhead there is a bank of televisions, CNN, MTV and the Cartoon Network. I am watching a cartoon in which a basket containing a baby bird is left outside a wooden door carved into the base of a tree. The words 'Knock, Knock' appear on the screen. A large rooster opens the door and picks up the basket. A note is pinned to the fabric covering the basket.

Dear Lady,
Please take care of my little one.
Signed,
Big One

The rooster looks inside, a small but fiesty baby bird pokes up. The rooseter gets excited. An image of the baby bird in a frying pan dances in the rooster's head. A chicken wearing a bonnet comes into the house and shoos the rooster away. The rooster is disappointed.
I am on the treadmill, in tears."

"Sometimes as a child, I would cry inconsolably. I would bellow, a primal cry, so deeply gutteral, cellular, and thoroughly real that it would terrify my mother.

'Stop, you have to stop. Can you hear me? Please stop...'

If I was able to speak at all, the only thing I would say was, 'I want my mom. I want my mom.' Again and again - an incantation. I would repeat it endlessly, comforting myself by rubbing back and forth over the words.

'I want my mom, I want my mom.'

I need to go back.

I found my birthmother on December 6th of last year, thanks entirely to Suz and her relentless efforts. We've been writing letters back and fourth since then, and each time I sent one out, I was like a giddy 10 year old girl with a first crush, until her reply would arrive. Her mother, Mary Kay ,began writing letters to me as well. Pretty soon, the letters had piled up, and I learned more and more about these two amazing women, and it felt as if Iwere missing this huge part of myself. Though I hadn't met them yet, I felt so connected to them that I actually MISSED them when I wasn't reading their letters. I knew it was time to go out there.

After a few roadblocks and much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I finally got my ticket out to Vegas. At Thanksgiving, my grandfather overheard my A-mom and I arguing about my going out there, and he gave up his frequent flyer miles so I could go. Per my A-mom's request, my two aunts accompanied me (which...was annoying and semi-intrusive at times, once we were there...but, beggars can't be choosers, right?).

Stacey met us at the baggage claim, and I stood there like a dunce and called her cell phone, not having a clue where she was...turned out she was BEHIND me laughing (so were my aunts). It was...surprisingly un-emotional. I was almost disappointed in myself. We were whisked off to the hotel, and I was too stunned to speak the entire drive. I just sat and stared at her. She told me not to cry, that she couldn't deal with tears...so I didn't. She helped us settle into the room and said she'd be back bright and early...that Mary Kay had a whole itenerary planned out for us. I don't think I slept the entire night. How could I?! Would YOU sleepafter a day like that?

It was December 15th, but I was greeted the next day by Stacey, Mary Kay, Jay (Stacey's fiancee), and Christmas presents. Mary Kay had gotten me photoalbums. ..one to hold pictures from the trip, and the other for my actual photography (does that sound snobbish? cause it's not supposed to...lol). I was whisked away to the Luxor, where we had lunch. Afterwards we headed upstairs and saw a3D IMAX of the deep sea adventure. Mary Kay was HILARIOUS. Every time a fish would swim "out" at us, she'd flinch and scream and grab my arm, trying to avoid...death by fishtail?

It was then that Itruely felt HOME. This was my family...I felt complete at that moment. I felt my heart sink while I thought about the "could have's" and "would have's" of growing up in my natural family. I tried not to get upset, and found myself having to remind myself that"the grass is always greener"...but I couldn't shake the feeling of complete normalcy...I was in awe of the natural bond I had to these two women whom I had only been speaking to for a year. It was as if I'd known them a lifetime.

We did a WHOLE lot of walking and a WHOLE lot of shopping. Mary was doing the grandma thing and insisting she buy me little gifts everywhere we went.  I accepted them graciously, and held myself back from throwing my arms around her and knocking her to the ground with the biggest bear hug in history.  We went to a jousting/dinner show at the Excalibur. Mary Kay was so into it I almost died laughing. It was the most fun I've had in ages. I passed out almost immideatly after I touched the matress that night.

The next few days were a blur of me staring from Stacey to Mary back and fourth, studying their features, laughing at their mannerisms that were reflected in me, even though this was my first time meeting them.
The night before I left, we spent the evening at Stacey's house. Between Stacey and Mary buying me gifts, and Jay winning me stuffed animals at the game rooms, I had accumulated so many things that when MaryKay handed me a little white box, I rolled my eyes playfully and insisted she didn't have to do that. I accepted it after making sure this was the last gift, and opened the box to find a small note. Stacey gasped and laughed, asking Mary Kay if THIS was what she was sobbing about all day. She retold the story of how all day, Mary Kay would start to tell her about the gift, but would always cut herself off, crying uncontrollably. I hesitantly opened it and removed the note from the box, revealing a necklace in the shape of a star. Mary Kay giddily told me to "Read the note! Read the note! Out loud!"
It read:

"The day you were born
I talked to the stars - Make her strong
Make her brave.
Make this the right thing to do"

When it came time to say goodbye, Mary grabbed my hand and squeezed, reluctant to let me go a second time. Stacey hugged be tightly, but quickly pulled away, not wanting to let me see her cry. She failed miserably. As soon as she got in her car, I saw her collapse onto the steering wheel, Mary Kay quickly joining her at the dashboard.

It killed me to let them go again and the plane ride back was long, teary, and frankly, gave me a stomachache - a physical manifestation of the 20 year longing for my mother.