Jane’s Calamity

There is a certain time of year when I loss all ability to function in the normal world. I become an unresponsive shell of myself and I am impossible to live with. I lash out, become even more emotional than I normally am and even worse, I bottle it up inside, because so many of those around me don’t understand that it’s possible to feel this way and still feel like adoption isn’t evil. For them, my feelings and that sentiment go hand in hand. Always. No exceptions. I am unhappy or have feelings that aren’t a display of brimming joy, so I must be of the opinion that adoption is evil.

I don’t feel that way – that’s ridiculous. I feel that uneducated, irresponsible people involved in adoption are evil. I feel that, for some, the ones who are part of the “we learned our lessons from the past, so we won’t make the same mistakes in the future” era of adoption are expected to just move along.

For the love of Pete – I’m one of the lucky ones! I had an open adoption – I had contact – I have information. What I never had was (and is) the supports in place to help me deal with the loss that, like it or not, open or closed, I still had (and still have) as a result of my adoption. I still grieve and people take issue with that…for some, Adoption = Happy regardless of your life experience – I should be happy I was adopted and just stfu. Adoption isn’t an instant source of happiness for some people and to be frank, open adoption isn’t always the cure for the sadness that sometimes results. I wish it was.

The funny thing, in all of this, I hate my birth mother. Loathe her. She is the cruelest, most self-serving woman I know, yet, I still long for her acceptance I guess. Having never had the ‘mother and daughter’ relationship that so many of my friends seem to have with their mothers – I want that, I want that from one of my freakin plethora of mothers. Is it to much to ask?

I think, this time of year is hardest for me because the holidays are always about family and for the most part, I feel like I am a wayward ship at sea, without familial connections – scared to build friendships, because it seems they rarely last. I suffer. My husband suffers. My son suffers.

I hate the holidays because I want to be like the family on TV – I want warmth, love and friendship. I want to be wanted and I don’t feel wanted. I don’t feel anything but overwhelming freakin sadness and that’s just not how the holidays are supposed to be, are they?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Being Adopted, Grief & Sadness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.