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I’m a terrible person, mother, wife, & daughter .
I can’t believe what I did last night. It’s the most stupid thing I think I’ve ever done.
We (my husband, son, and I) went out for dinner last night to celebrate our 9th anniversary. Since I’m staying home today it was decided that my husband would do the driving after dinner so I could have a few drinks.
I had two drinks. It was happy hour, so I’m pretty sure they were doubles (at least they tasted like doubles).
We were going to Wal-Mart after dinner to run a few errands. So, after dinner was over we walked to the car and got into the same seats we were in when we arrived at the restaurant. That meant that I was in the DRIVER’S SEAT!!!!
Ok, so Wal-Mart is two blocks away from the restaurant - but that’s not the point!
I also didn’t feel like I’d had any drinks – but that’s not the point either!
My son was in the car! My husband was in the car! What if something had happened? I could never, ever forgive myself.
We didn’t realize the mistake until we were turning into the Wal-Mart parking lot. Thankfully, nothing had happened, but I feel so irresponsible.
Normally, I don’t even feel comfortable driving after only having one drink, let alone two that were likely doubles! And then to subject the two people I love the most in this world to it – I feel sick just thinking about it.
There, I’ve admitted it and now you can confirm it. I’m a terrible person, mother, wife, & daughter .
The last couple of weeks have been a whirl-wind, to say the least.
The last time I wrote about what’s been going on in relation to establishing meaningful contact with my natural mother was in this post – My Monday. Since then sooo much has happened.
Since that Monday, I’ve received a letter and several emails.
I have found out that I was given a name before I was adopted and that my natural mother was allowed to spend a whole week with me before giving me up. She even had a photo of us together when I was five days old that she was able to scan and email to me! Also, I have found out for sure that she was 18 when I was born, not 13 like I had been told by my aparents.
She was given incorrect information as well.
She was told that my amother was a substitute teacher and that I was going to be living in New England.
I don’t think that my amother has ever been a substitute teacher. Also, I did not go to live in New England – I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. As far from the ideal life that New England holds as you can get!
I’m beginning to think that my aparents were, and probably always have been, a bunch of liars. Telling lies to get what they wanted, and not caring who they hurt along the way.
This is the way I look at it. They wanted another child (who knows if they cared if it was a boy or a girl – I’m certainly not going to ask them). So, to make them look like model adoptive parents they told a few lies – who cares, right?
First, they lied about where I was going to be raised – who wants to tell a complete stranger that they are going to take their precious child away from her to be raised in Brooklyn? It’s not like it was the safest place in the world in 1977. Then, they lied about my amother’s occupation. This was probably to make it look like she was going to stay home with me after I was taken to their home. I wonder if they even told anyone that they already had a nanny/housekeeper in place to take care of my abrother and me while my aparents’ worked. (To this day I refer to this woman as my third mother – in fact, I think I love her more than I do my amother.)
Next, they lied to me. They told me that my natural mother was 13 when I was born. I wonder why they said this. Was it to ensure I didn’t feel rejected? To ensure I felt like she had no other choice (come on, what 13 year old can really take care of a baby)? They also lied to me about when they brought me home. They told me that it was the day after I was born – not the week after. Again, why did they do this? I don’t think they told lies like this to my abrother – I’m not sure they had any information to accept or deny – I think they just told him that they had no information about his natural mother. Why couldn’t they have just told me this instead of completely obliterating the truth? And my amother wonders why our relationship is so strained…Gee, let’s see…um, could it be that it’s always been all about you?!
On a much happier note, my natural mother says that she will accept me for whoever I am and whatever I have become! What a relief to not have to live up to anyone else’s expectations! I can finally be free to be whoever I have become without having to make excuses for myself. I’m not sure I’ll know how to act without this requirement.
Oh, and the BIGGEST/BEST NEWS OF ALL – my natural mother and her husband are coming to visit….THIS WEEKEND! I’m so excited and nervous at the same time. So much so, I constantly feel like I’m going to vomit (I hope I don’t – or if I do, I can at least make it to the bathroom in time ; >).
Oh well, that’s all I’m going to share for now. I’ll try and update you as soon as I can after the visit.
Ta!
Orchidsnowfairy’s natural mother has stopped communicating with her – and I believe she has no idea why. They only just found each other last September. That is sad.
What’s scary is, it happens to a lot of adoptee’s in reunion. I’m petrified it’s going to happen to me.
I’m afraid that my natural mother is going to satisfy her curiosity, realize that I turned out “ok”, and then move on. Or – an even more terrifying thought - realize I didn’t turn out how she thought I was going to and move on because I’m a disappointment.
Even worse, I’m afraid she’s going to think that I’m better off without her in my life (or vice-versa) and disappear.
I do not want that to happen. Now that we’ve found each other, I want for us to continue to be in each others’ lives.
I don’t care why she gave me up; or that I can’t stand one of my adoptive parents. I don’t blame her. Nor could I ever hate her for doing it. She did what she thought was going to be best for me at the time. I don’t care if her life isn’t perfect now, who’s is? But this is what scares me.
I don’t know what reasons Orchidsnowfairy’s natural mother has for cutting her off, but I think that if this were to happen to me it would be a heck of a lot harder to deal with, than to deal with everything that comes with having my natural mother in my life.
Why do natural mother’s do this?
Orchidsnowfairy’s natural mother is the one who initiated contact. If she didn’t want to have a lasting relationship with her daughter, why did she contact her to begin with?
I’m sad for Orchidsnowfairy. I’m scared for myself.
That’s what my little boy said in a whiny little voice of injustice. I had just said “Love you” to him on his way downstairs to watch cartoons.
Nope, it wasn’t dark. It was 10AM.
In his cute little mind, I guess I’m only allowed to love him when I say goodnight.
Kids, gotta love em – ooops, it’s not dark yet ; )
In my post titled “Getting more of the story” I said:
Her response was that we (my husband and I) had ruined her entire summer – the year before (again, a whole other post to explain this one)!
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what happened the year before to make her (my amother) so bitter…angry…hostile… towards me and my husband. Maybe it wasn’t just one thing, maybe it was. The whole thing just annoys the hell out of me I don’t want to bring it up to her again (though she has many times since) to try and find out. I don’t think I could deal with it again.
That summer started when my husband and I were still living in Colorado Springs (my parents were in Vermont). I was graduating from college at the end of May. The plan was for my aparents to come out for the graduation and then we would all return to our merry lives – in our separate states. Things were going so well then.
We should have stuck with that plan for soooo many reasons it’s not even funny. But oh well, they say hindsight is 20/20.
Given that I was graduating from college I thought I should probably try to find a real job in the field I was getting my degree in. Since I wasn’t having much luck in Colorado Springs I decided to look at jobs on the east coast.
I grew up in NYC and would have loved to go back, but my husband didn’t think that the city was for him. Nor could we have afforded it. So instead, I ended up getting a job about 10 minutes away from where my parents lived in VT. Great, we’d have a place to stay while we looked for a house and then when we started having kids we’d be close to grandparents for part of the year (my parents spend a little over half the year in Chicago). What could be better!
I should have shot myself then and there for thinking that this was a good thing.
I called my aparents and let them know the great news – I had a job! A job that was so close to their house. The only closer it could have gotten was if it was actually in their house (Vermont’s funny like that – nothing for MILES). I asked my amother if it would be ok if we stayed with them for a few months while we looked for a house.
My amother agreed. Excellent!
No, not excellent. We should have just rented an apartment while we were looking for a house.
A couple of days later I got a call from my aparents. They weren’t going to make it to the graduation. The graduation that was 4 days away! They had tickets already, but they just didn’t feel safe flying after September 11th (a year hadn’t passed yet). Besides, the only reason they had agreed to come was so they could see me. Not see me graduate, just see me.
I was PISSED.
I know it’s petty, but they didn’t go to my High School graduation either. They had accidentally booked their yearly flight to England for a few days before. At the time, they swore up and down that they would go to my college graduation. I guess that promise was made under the assumption I would graduate from The University of Chicago (the school I was headed to the fall after High School). However, since they made this promise to me, I was going to do everything in my power to hold them to it.
As with most colleges, the classes at The University of Colorado were not always offered every semester. So, instead of staying for the fall semester of 2002 to finish up, I busted my ass the fall before to make sure I had everything. I knew that if I graduated in December there was no way I was going to go to the graduation ceremony in May, let alone my aparents. So, fall semester 2001 I took 21 credits to make sure my aparents would have no excuse not to come. What a fucking idiot I was.
I didn’t graduate from The University of Chicago. That year, I was graduating from The University of Colorado – apparently an inferior school not deserving of my aparents presence. I guess that meant I was not deserving either.
Later in the conversation where they told me about not coming, I managed to get out of them the real reason – I was moving to VT, and they would see me in a week anyway!
WTF – how is that the same as watching your daughter graduate from college. Let’s forget the fact that they will NEVER be witnessing the same event with my abrother – he’s such a loser, he got expelled from a college that doesn’t give grades (which means he can’t even transfer to another college because there are no grades to transfer)! You would have thought they would have been proud that at least one of their children managed to make it. I guess I was wrong.
Wow, this post is getting long. I’ll continue with our time in Vermont later.
That’s all for now!
I have a cold. Or, at least I hope it’s a cold and not another stinking sinus infection. (I get at least 5 sinus infections a year).
To make matters worse, I’m STILL IN PAIN FROM MY SURGERY! That was five weeks ago! If I had been told that this could happen from the start I’m not sure I would have agreed.
On to happier news.
I took Joclyn’s advice – sort of. She suggested that I contact my natural mother at the business address that I had (though was not completely sure it was for the right person). I wrote a draft of a letter that I was going to send to both the address I thought was her residence as well as the address for the business. I showed it to my husband who poked a few holes in it and convinced me it would probably be better if he just called the few numbers we could find for people with her name in Kansas to find out if she had received the original letter.
So, instead of writing to her (and risk one of her employees getting the letter before her), my husband called (I really am a chicken – bwauck!). He did that yesterday morning. The information we had about her owning that business was correct. He spoke to her!
The conversation was less than two minutes long. He asked her if she had received the letter. She had. She said that she was working on getting a letter out to me, but was having difficulty writing it.
After that, I received an email from her. She apologized for not letting me know sooner that she had received the letter. Ouch. That one hurt. I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound like that, but since I had waited FOUR years to write to her it seemed to be a little bit of a dig. Oh well, I guess I deserved it.
She seems like a really nice person. I can’t wait to get to know more about her!
So yesterday I finally got off my ass and filled out the paperwork to get my original birth certificate (before the adoption took place – supposedly has real mother’s and father’s name). While filling out the forms it stated that if the record holder was requesting their original (before adoption) birth certificate, then what they would get would be stamped with great big huge VOID stamped across the front of it.
Sheessh. That hurt. I didn’t realize how much it did until this morning.
Does that make me voided? I wish it did. Maybe then it would explain a lot of the feelings I have about all of this (which right now I don’t even clearly know what they are, that’s how confusing they are).
My husband is still trying to figure out how he should approach the subject about things I need to do with finding/contacting my natural mother.
While I was filling out the forms I needed the birth certificate that had my adoptive parents listed on it. My husband was (still is?) confused about the fact that they are even on the birth certificate. He doesn’t think it makes any sense that they are on there; after all they had nothing to do with the actual birth. Bless him. I guess he just doesn’t understand that had my parents decided to never tell me about being adopted that to keep the secret alive I would need a normal looking birth certificate (they told me when I was young, so there never really was a secret, but still). I mean, what would I have thought if I had been presented with a document that showed nothing in the mother or father lines?
Back to being voided.
Couldn’t the Kansas Department of Vital Statistics find a better way to document that the original birth certificate was replaced/redone due to adoption? After I finished filling out the forms (and stamped and sealed the envelope) I found on a piece of paper from the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (a completely different agency/department than where the birth certificate comes from) that the request needed to be notarized since I was asking for a pre-adoption birth certificate.
So here’s my question – why wasn’t this information provided on the actual form where there is a box to check that your ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE is what you are asking for? What would have happened if I hadn’t notarized it? Would I have received correspondence from the Vital Statistics office asking for this? Since I work for the government (Federal) I know that that is not the likely outcome. I know, I’m one of the lucky ones since Kansas is one of the only states to let you have your pre-adoption information, but still why do they make it so hard and potentially secretive?
So today, I have to go to the bank to get my request notarized – what a pain.
The whole reason I’m going through this is so I can have my original birth certificate in order to order my adoption file. Apparently you need this information to obtain it. Seems strange to me, but I guess there must be a reason for it. I don’t know what I expect to find in this file. Maybe there’s a copy of the letter my aparents destroyed when they took me away. Maybe nothing special is there. I guess I’m just curious. That’s just the way human nature is, isn’t it?
Sorry for the absence, I’ve been recovering from surgery.
I had my tonsils and adenoids removed almost four weeks ago and was told that I’d be better within two weeks. That two week mark passed more than a week and a half ago, and I’m still in pain. I went back to the doctor yesterday only to be told that the pain I was having was because I was still really swollen. He prescribed some steroids to reduce the swelling and told me that if the pain did not go away within three days to call him, otherwise I might have to have a CAT scan to rule out an abcess. Who knew a very routine surgery could end up being such a long, drawn out recovery? I mean, I knew it was worse for adults, but come on, this is rediculous!
Anyway, enough venting.
Still no response from my birthmother. I guess writing another letter is the next task to tackle. Any suggestions on what I should say?Below is the letter I sent in June (in blue, without identifying information):
Four years ago, I received a message from you via the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. I know you’re probably upset with me for not responding sooner, for that I apologize. Also, I will understand if you choose not to respond.
When I first received the message you left for me, I was going through a few things that I was having trouble dealing with. I just didn’t think it was fair to you to contact you with everything that was going on, nor did I think I could handle anything else on my plate.
As you know, I just turned 30. What you don’t know is I’m happily married with a wonderful 4-year-old son. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, but have lived all over the country (as well as England) since graduating from HS. We currently live in Colorado.
My adopted parents said that when they brought me home they were given a letter from you (I assume it was for me). They destroyed it. They said that their lawyers told them it would be best. I’m sorry they did that; can you remember what you wrote?
I would like to hear from you, so if you wouldn’t mind emailing my address is: x
So, given that in the first paragraph of the letter I had said that I would understand if she didn’t want to respond how do I write to her again? First, I want to make sure she got the first letter. Second, I want to try to illicit a response.
What should I do?
