Why Didn't Your 'Real Family' Want You?

Oh, my child, but we did. Yet we are not your 'real' family in any way that affords us exclusively that title. We are your 'marginally' family, your 'hopefully one day' family. I digress.

You were, are, wanted. It destroyed my relationship with your bio-dad's family, how badly they wanted you, without regard to what was best for you. His grandmother died wishing to 'bring her family together', to have you to rock to sleep in the ways that an old Italian great grandmother would. His mother dreamed of days when she could override my rights, take you no matter my (or your bio-dad's) choice. His dad silently disapproved. Yes, yes they wanted you. I stepped fought away from that part of your family in an effort to protect my choice, to protect you. I don't know, now, how they would feel about you. In the end it didn't matter. They all passed before you were six. I wonder, would they have held on longer if you were in their lives?

My family. Oh how they ache to know you. I moved out here six weeks after your birth, running from the pain of you being so close and yet so far, and was greeted with a stark reminder. On the board, just inside my mother's door, was her version of your birth announcement. Your name, date of birth, weight and length, all written in her prettiest handwriting. All she would ever have of you, too sacred to erase. My whole pregnancy she begged me to bring you out to the left coast, to let her help me raise you.Still she cries for missing you, having never met you.  My little brother - oh he rarely speaks of you, but when he does it is with the tone of support and yet pain. Yes, yes my son, you are wanted.

You are wanted in the two bedroom apartments I could not bear to get because I couldn't have an empty room where you could have been. In the days, even now, when I wonder how different my life would have been if you were here with me instead of there. I could whisper of taking you home from the hospital with me, to my house, because then it would be our house and oh how I wanted that. I wanted to breastfeed and diaper you.

So then, why didn't I? More than I wanted you to be my  son, I wanted you to have the world. I want you to have the best of life, to do and have all of the things that I never did. I was not enough for you, and for that I am sorry and yet so grateful.

With Love Always,
Me

What a Difference a Year Makes

It's been almost exactly a year since I've dropped into my little corner of the internet, it seems. I've been kept away by a much needed redesign over here, mostly to my sidebar. I was avoiding removing my ex from it, for some odd sentimental reason. It wasn't nearly that hard. Now there's a bit of a spruce up that went with it, but I know the design of this blog could use some help. Maybe one day.

I need to write, I've got things to get out. I will draft my first post here in just a bit, but a quick update is necessary. I have had a little communication thought T, though nothing earth shattering. They have moved, so I don't even have a good address to send presents anymore. I wonder if they would give me their new one, but I am afraid to ask. They never did get divorced. I guess that's a plus, though I hesitate to really know.

I am hanging in here. I've done a lot of thinking this past year, hopefully a lot of growing coupled with it. I am dating someone new-ish . We're quickly approaching 6 months together. He knows about Monkey and held me while I cried through the Bad Months (Sept-Jan, if anyone is new here. The run of back to school season-Monkey's birthday-Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas is just awful). We'll see where that goes. I did get my own place, a one bedroom apartment with two cats and a frog. It has been healing.

With that, off to write I go

With Love Always,
Me

Sometimes, even 5 years later, grief is boundless.

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I survived

Merry end of the year. I’ve survived another season of the BAD months, and that is something to celebrate. This year they were particularly bad. I guess that’s why I have avoided writing – because this makes it real, ya know?

It starts in September. There was a 5^th birthday, to which I sent no present. I didn’t even know where to begin. How do you? I’ve said before that it is like putting my heart in a box and mailing it away to send presents, and that is just as true now. I don’t know what he is in to. I don’t know what he already has. I just don’t know.

Halloween. There was none of that in my life. We turned off the porch light, stayed in and pretended it was just another day. I could not handle it, knowing my son was out doing his thing and I didn’t/wouldn’t even get a picture. It was too much.

Thanksgiving? I boycotted it this year as much as I could. We went to the casino, blew money we didn’t have to blow, and then had a bar style Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice to people watch, especially in the area that this bar is in. I was thankful to have The One by my side while my heart ached.

Then came December 14^th. What is special about that day, you ask? It was the day 26 people were killed inside an elementary school on the east coast. This hit hard for me. The beginning reports were that the kids involved were all 5-6, which ended up being close to true. Cue anxiety, as there is a 5 year old on the east coast that owns my heart. Even now, writing about it is hard. There was some good in it, though. I finally found the courage to message T on the bookface and ask her to hug Monkey for me. She messaged me back (!!) and we discussed some things. According to her, she was never mad at me. Ok. We can go with that. After all, I have everything to lose, so I have to.  I found out that the EX’s new kid looks a lot like Monkey. I’m not sure why, but that was a major kick in the gut. In the end, she hugged Monkey for me and stopped responding to my messages.

Cut to Dec 16 – The One came home from a weekend with Sugarbutt. We had an argument that was partially fueled by my emotional state (see Dec 14) and partially fueled by frustration/stress. The One had spent money (that I desperately needed for gas) on something he said he wouldn’t and I just was at my wits end. I am of the opinion that his medication is not managing his illness well, and he is certainly spiraling out of his own control. Whatever it is, he left that night. Exactly what I needed in the midst of an emotional weekend and lead up to Christmas. I’m not sure what to say of our status right now, other that we are hoping that this space will allow us both to examine what we really want.

Then there’s Christmas. Oh Christmas. I’d rather just ignore the whole damn day. This year, I got to miss two little boys. Sugarbutt had a whole smorgasbord of presents to open from me that were likely not marked as being from me. That happens when you are suddenly no longer in the picture. Monkey got nothing from me, again a moment of self-preservation. No pictures, no phone calls, no texts. There was nothing from his family to me.

Today, I am recovering from the BAD months, heartbroken and hopeful. I don’t know what the new year will bring in so many ways. All I know is that things will be different.

With Love Always

ME

Fuck

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, I fear. I don’t know, maybe I haven’t. There are so many things I don’t know lately.

I don’t know why I even keep this space, there is never anything new and I feel like an imposter.

I don’t know why I bother to hope. It’s futile. It hurts.

Last night was the worst night I have had in a long time – and this morning I feel as unsupported as ever.

Backtracking

Maybe I am bipolar. The doc is trying to figure out what her picture of me is. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just fucked up and no one can or will help.

I’m putting on weight in a way that even I don’t understand. I feel so fat and ugly and unwanted.

Depression is eating me alive – or maybe it’s consuming me dead. Take your pick.

I’m not me anymore. I am a monster.

Failure

I’ve written here before of the fact that I always ‘knew’ I would have a baby for someone else. I planned to be a surrogate for someone I loved dearly. I have not written of why, of how I feel now about it.

A pair of my dearest friends are a couple, a gay male couple. They, obviously, will need a womb and egg donor when it comes time for them to have children – unless VA changes its feelings on homosexual couples adopting. For years, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be that person. Then Monkey came along.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know some people are surrogates for completely altruistic reasons. For me, it was a bit of a selfish thing. Yes, I would be giving them an irreplaceable gift. I would be the ‘hero’ in the situation. I don’t want to be a ‘hero’. I loathe the term, even when referring to my birthmom status. Being a gestational carrier would be no different, in terms of how I feel about myself. I would do anything to bring a smile to those that I love, and for me that is the selfish part. I would not so much be doing it for them, moreso to prove to myself that I could do it, that I was strong enough. It would be because I am selfish. I wanted to be special enough to be the person they chose.

Now I am fairly certain I will never be able to go down that path, and it hurts. I want, more than anything, to help them be parents, to help someone carry on their genetic line. The boys have not decided to carry on their lines yet, but I have had my opportunities to do it. I even went so far as to contact a doctor that deals with such things.

I know I cannot do it. I know that I cannot put my mother through the loving a grandchild that is not ‘her’ grandchild again. She still grieves Monkey. She grieves Sugarbutt. She wants to be a grandmother badly. I did not even tell her of my pregnancy until after I knew I was placing Monkey with H & T, yet she fell in love with that baby across the country. Living with her now, I cannot see putting her through that again. It may be the last straw to push her over the bridge to suicide.

Don’t get me wrong, I could use the money. I could spend it all in one day and still have things I need to spend it on. There is no doubt in that. I just don’t know that the hearts that would break would be worth it. As bonded as I am to children I have never met (my friends’ placed children, for example), there is no way I could go through a pregnancy and not bond with another child.

Mr. Right couldn’t handle it either, I don’t think. Watching someone else’s child grow in me, watching me swell with the beauty of pregnancy, I don’t know that he deserves that sort of pain. I resent adoption, myself, my emotions, for taking away the chance to help friends and family build their families.

I am sorry. It feels like a weakness. I give blood, I am an organ donor, I donate to charity when I can because of the understanding that we are all human. We are all lucky to have what we do and if I have a resource that you do not, why shouldn’t I share?

Yet I cannot. I feel like a failure.

With Love Always,

Me

Instinct

Evening Ya’ll!

Let me start this post with an apology – to everyone. I have been less than supportive, less than a friend to my friends lately. I have missed birthdays, skipped get togethers and avoided phone calls. I have been wrapped up in me. I may be for the next, oh, 5 months, since the BAD months are coming. Birthmom friends can identify here – September is Monkey’s bday (and starting Kindergarten), October is Halloween, November is Thanksgiving and Sugar Butt’s birthday then the one that takes them all, Christmas. All kid centered, all a reminder of what I am missing out on. So let me apologize now, for I know I will not be able to during the BAD months.

I have fallen asleep several nights this past week writing this post in my head. Gut instinct. The powerful thing it is.

Anyone whom has met me in real life (wahoo!) knows that I am the kind of person whom you either hit it off with or, well, don’t. I carry around that energy as protection. I trust you from the start or I never will. Usually my instincts are right about these kinds of things. I will make little to no effort to sustain a friendship with someone whom friendship is work, I will not ‘force’ chemistry.

That said, I did not hit it off with H & T. I did love them, instantly, for their interest in my baby (for he was still mine then, 100%). I struggled to be their friend, not just their ‘carrier’. To be fair, we did hang out some. We laughed, yes. I made them dinner (only now do I see how backwards this was), encouraged them on their foster journey. There was just never an ease of conversation that comes when you have the same sort of energy that I do.

I shrugged it off. I was looking for a mother for my son, not a best friend. I figured we could develop a friendship, fall in as family over our mutual love for this little soul. H and I have always had a sort of awkward relationship, I took it for him being Useless’ friend. I am especially awkward around men that I do not click with, so this never really shocked me.

At the time, I was incredibly unaware of the demand for a white, male baby in this country. My son could have had any of 1000 lives, all different, all loving. Had I known this at the time, I may have let that uneasy feeling rule the placement. I didn’t. I was [blissfully] unaware. I did not see my child as a commodity. Surely there was no one else in the world who wanted a child from as damaged  a beginning as Monkey had, right?

Now I know better. Now I know I should have trusted my gut. Now I know why T raged when someone accused them of trading their vehicle for a baby when they let us borrow it. We were disposable. We were not people who needed transportation help, but a means to an end. Maybe they didn’t see it that way. Maybe I have it all wrong. I hope so. I just know that this is what my gut was feeling – a sense of wrongness that is now reality.

With Love Always

Me  

If I Could

He will be 5 this year. Gone are the toddler days, the little boy with the Mohawk and stuffed monkey. I’ve missed out on preschool, first days on the bus and fieldtrips. At least, I assume I have. The lack of communication means that’s all I can do.

I don’t know how he feels about last year’s birthday present, if it has even ever been read to him. I hope, deep inside, that his mom has read it to him with tears in her eyes, understanding deeply. I hope that the note inside has not been ripped out, that she also has read that many times. I hope she feels my love in it, a love she will pass on to him.

I’ve begun to daydream about what I would do for his 5^th birthday, if I could. It’s hard, when I don’t even know what he is particularly into right now. All of the pictures I see are staged; his family on a porch, with his little sisters on their birthday.

So what would I do for a little boy that I barely know – except in the deepest parts of my soul – for a 5^th birthday, when I have only been there to celebrate the day he was born?

I would take him to the zoo, a sort of recreation of our last visit. We would ride all the rides, see all the animals. I would help him feed the giraffes, though I doubt he would need my help any longer. We would talk about the stripes on the zebras, discuss how the seals are all sorts of different colors and patterns but they are the same inside.

We would have ice cream and I would laugh at his messy face. I would cry at his ability to now ride the carousel alone – my favorite picture of us is me helping him hold onto the horsey, kissing his cheek and him grinning, loving every second of it.

There would be a party in the park – all of his friends and family invited. Swings, slides, balloons, the whole works. A barbecue, a chance to get to know all of these people who are forever a part of my son’s life but are distant strangers to me. This would be the first time I have seen them all since his baby shower, held after the birth of Monkey. A celebration of 5 years of family.

Mostly, though, I would want to sign the decree that makes them a forever family. I would want to cry when the judge pronounces him as more their family and less mine. Tears of joy, relief, sadness. Tears of someone who can only know what that feels like when they have been there. I would hug him tightly, kiss his cheek, and tell him how much I love him.

At the end of the day, I would take him home to mom, looking in my rear view mirror to see him asleep in his booster seat. A job well done. A child well loved.

Instead, I will cry angry, regretful tears. If I could…

With Love Always,

Me

Warning: You May Cry

This is the letter I wrote and sent to a rescue thanking them for the life of my Woo. He passed June 8, for those whom I have not told.

To whom it may concern:

            You are not the rescue I got my dog from, but as they seem to not exist anymore I am writing to you. I figure no rescue will reject a thank you or a story of love.

            My awesome Woo passed away June 8^th of this year. He was my best friend for 12 years, and will continue to be my soulmate for years to come. He was found by a rescue in North Carolina about 6 months before he came into my life. They, much like I am sure you do, nursed him back from the brink of death, from a case of heartworms so bad that it eventually lead to the congestive heart failure that killed him.

            Woo was my best friend through the trying years of high school, and the last year of middle school. He was a Pekingese mix, we think maybe moreso a Tibetan Spaniel. I have (and will) never met a dog like him. He was the peaceful center, even when his dog family extended to 4 other members. Woo would tolerate anything, never complaining. He was quiet, only discovering his ability to bark at 10ish years old. He was known to greet you at the door with a hearty ‘Woo Woo!’ when excited. It warms my heart still thinking of it.

            He lived a full life, living on both coasts and playing in snow (his favorite) and basking in the sun. For the last few years of his life he was mostly blind, selectively deaf. He was a very independent dog, but had a knack for showing up while I was in tears, just to comfort me.

            He was with my mother though marriage and divorce, two kids graduating high school, and a move across the US. He helped me to recover from an abusive relationship, placing a child for adoption and growing up.

Without people like you, I never would have gotten to know Woo, the best damn dog in the world. He was more than a dog; a quiet peaceful soul. Thank you for everything you do. I am sure there are millions of stories like mine. What  you do is invaluable, to both the dogs and their (selected, I am sure of it) people.

Thank you for everything.  

Debbie & Woo

 With Love Always , 

Me

Mother's Day #Iamamother

This is a post inspired by Danielle of Another Version of Mother for her I am a Mother blog round up. It surrounds this quote

“I am a mother. I am a mother of loss. But I am a mother nonetheless and I will always be a mother.”

  I went a little off track, per usual, but here is my entry.

It feels like I am drowning in a pool, a pool I have only dipped my toe into. It’s your pool, a place I don’t even fathom how to swim. Yet I sink, I drown. Surrounded by reminders that I should be in your world, I cannot breath. Here at the shallow end, I look out at you and see your flourishing where I would be in over my head. Yes, there is a jealousy.

You look past me, not seeing the defeat in my step. Too wrapped up in your happiness, you have quickly forgotten the price. I am drowning and you scarcely see the bubbles on the surface. Breathlessly, I turn and walk away.

I just cannot bear the thought of watching your perfection today, when I am the one who dug the whole, found the water, gave it life to begin with.

Every year I return to this place, hoping for a nod, a smile, an outstretched hand.I belong in your pool, side by side, full of love. Instead, you look beyond, disapproving that you ever needed anyone to learn to swim. When will I learn?

With Love Always

Me