Jane’s Calamity

A little over two years ago, I made a decision I will regret for the rest of my life.

I say that knowing my words will raise all sorts of emotions in people, because I think it will be very difficult for people to understand how something that could be so positively good could turn out so catastrophically bad – bad for me and bad for my family.

I opened my home to the family of the child I placed in open adoption. Not for the first time, but for the second time in as many years.

The first time was difficult, not impossible, but difficult. Not even emotionally difficult – it was just hard sharing my home with people so unlike me I guess.

The second time, I did it out of desperation. It had been a number of year since we’d seen each other and in the summer before they moved in, I had my first visit in a long time.

It went bad. Real bad. I discovered things that made me rage – that week long visit changed so much in me.

The child I had placed for adoption so that she could have a better life was being neglected and abused.

So, when months later, I was asked to provide refuge for a hasty departure that would be the first steps in what would ultimately become a divorce, I leaped. I wanted so badly to provide for her now what I had hoped to be providing for her when I placed her…I guess I felt I was getting another chance.

That’s where the folder came from. I was digging in my files, getting ready to file our tax return, when I saw this odd blue hanging folder.  I don’t have any blue hanging folders. I have green ones. Ugly green ones. The blue one looked strange sitting there among the green ‘Army Issue’ looking folders.

So I opened it.

Inside, a legal document, two pages in length. A Passport. A Birth Certificate.

I open the Passport, it says her name. It has a picture of her when she was so small, a year old, maybe almost two. I glance at the pages, look at the stamps.

Then, do I dare? I look at the legal document, at the top in all capital letters “FINAL DECREE OF ADOPTION”

Her decree. The decree. The document that started all of this.

I look at it, nothing is unexpected and I don’t really have any real reaction to seeing it, other than knowing that it’s here. Why is it here?

Then I look at her birth certificate.

I gasp.

It’s not her amended birth certificate. It’s her original birth certificate. The one with my last name.

I scan the document. It looks different to me. Different because it says only a few things. Her name, her date and place of birth and the record number.

It doesn’t list a parent. Not a mother, not a father. No one.

I lost it right then. I literally dropped to my knees and sobbed.

Seeing her original birth certificate was more than I ever thought I’d ever see in terms of documents – I didn’t even know her parents had one. But seeing it without a single parent listed – including myself – it was like being gut punched after a full meal.

Today, I spent the day doing any and everything I could to avoid thinking about it – I even built a new bed for my son, something I’d been wanting to do for a while, but kept putting off. I have cleaned my house, bathed the dog and finished all of the laundry.

Now, there is nothing left to do but sit here and sob and think about how I have even been erased from her original birth certificate.

As for the first part of this post – she and her mother did move in with us and it was the most horrific experience of my life. Her mother, who has some major mental illness issues, can’t (or won’t) parent. They are now living with family members in another state and based on the limited communication we’ve had since they left, I’m assuming that the situation for her hasn’t changed much.

Guilt is a son of a bitch.

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?