I was born to a teenage mother, who smoked, probably drank and did various drugs, and who contracted measles during her pregnancy, so when I arrived, I had multiple birth defects. Some they noticed right away and did something to correct, but other problems weren't addressed for a number of years. I'm not sure if that was negligence on the part of the medical organization we were with at the time, or an attempt on their part to cut corners and save their money, or because they were afraid of completely overwhelming my family with the number and complexity of the problems I had. I have my suspicious that cost had something to do with their choice of actions, but no proof.
That's beside the point, though. My mother had her own problems, and though she did want me and want to care for me, being seventeen and unwed andinvolved with the wrong crowd, her mother thought she was better suited to care for me, and so she and her husband at the time adopted me, and my mother took off on her own. The adoption was complete before I was three, and though I don't remember any of it, we have a lot of photos in the album from that day. I was all dressed up in a white dress, with a pink satin ribbon, and it was apparently a very big deal to my new parents, if not the rest of the family.
I don't know when I finally understood what adoption was, and that my family was not my biological family, but eventually it did click, probably sometime before I was nine. It wasn't really something that mattered to me back then; they were my family, biological or not!
Going through my teenage years, though, along with a case of typical teenage rebellion, I began to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like if I'd been raised by my real mother. I even wondered if maybe I had a twin, though I think that was more wishful thinking than thinking it might actually be true. I simply wanted someone who really understood me; that was something I never felt like I had. My adopted mom and dad divorced when I was about five, and that threw a whole new spin on things; but for the most part, it never really bothered me until I got older.
My mom is 35 years older than I am, and that's quite a generation gap. I can remember her going to counseling as far back as my fourth or fifth grade years, and I suspect she was dealing with depression even then, but as I got older, it only seemed to make the rift between us wider and wider. I wouldn't be surprised to find, if I'd gone in for counseling as well, that I was clinically depressed too, in my late teens and early twenties, and I'm sure that didn't help matters any either.
There were times when Mom made me so angry, I thought of running away. I even started packing my bags once or twice, thinking I'd call my dad and ask him to come get me and let me stay until Mom was sorry for treating me the way she had, but I'd never follow through. If I'd had the self-confidence though, I just might have done it.
I guess I was about sixteen or seventeen when Mom and Julie (her daughter, my mother) started talking again. Julie was up in Washington state, living with her husband (not my father) and her son, my half brother. Mom went up to visit her, while I stayed a weekend with a family friend, because Julie wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with me, yet.
After that visit, we started exchanging gifts at Christmas and on birthdays, and talking on the phone now and then. I wasn't terribly comfortable with the idea back then, but I muddled through. It was some time later, when I got angry with Mom for something I thought was unfair, that I thought about running away to Washington to live with Julie and her family. Of course, I never did.
I don't remember now if it was my 19th birthday, 20th, or 21st, but Julie flew down for her first visit with me right around one of those days. I was as nervous as could be, and very uneasy around her at first, but she's a fun person to be with, and I guess I did eventually unbend some.
She's come out to visit twice since then, and while a lot of her time was spent talking just to mom, somewhere out of earshot, she did come in and talk to me this last time, apologizing for all the things she felt she'd done wrong in my life. It was rather awkward, but I told her I didn't blame her for any of it, and I could understand why she did some of the things she did after I was born.
We're more friends than anything now, though I'm still not as comfortable talking with her as I feel I ought to be. She's fun to do things with though, and I imagine my life might have been quite different if she'd been around for more of it.
We do what we can, though, and changing the past isn't on our list of abilities. She has e-mail access now, so we write back and forth about once or twice a week, and she tells me how her luck on the dating scene goes (she and her husband divorced just a year or so ago), and I tell her what's up with Jev and myself, and Mom of course. It seems a little odd at times, but it works.
Yes, the person I haven't mentioned in al of this is my natural father. I never knew anything about him for a long, long time, and never really felt comfortable asking about him. After Mom and I moved to Missouri though, Donnie, my brother who's in prison, offered up some information about him in a letter.
He goes by Buddy, though that's not his name, and last my brother heard, he lived just a couple blocks from where I did, when Mom and I were still living in Bellflower. That came as a shock to me; all that time, he'd been so close and I never even knew it. I think my brother was waiting until I was too far away to go walking down the street there looking for him, but maybe he had other reasons, or just never thought I'd want to know. At any rate, he also told me I have a half sister, who's not too much younger than I am, though if he knew her name, he didn't say. According to Donnie, I tke after my father, which is no surprise. Julie is a blue-eyed blonde, and I have dark brown hair and hazel eyes. What was a shock was my father's so-called occupation. I get my brains from him, it seems, but he put his to work making illegal drugs.
I found all this out just a month or stwo before I went back out to California to visit myfriends. All that time, I turned it over and over in my head; I wanted to see this person who is my father. In the end, good sense won out over curiosity though. Even if I'd managed to find him, and not get into any danger down "Drug Street" where he supposedly lives, I think meeting him would probably have been more depressing than the not knowing.
I did go through my high school yearbook though, loking for anyone who might just be my half-sister, but I never did see anyone who fit the image in my mind. It would hbe nice to know if she was someone I knew, but I doubt she was, and I'll probably never know.
It was my brother, though, who also told me Mom had to fight to get me away from Julie. Up until that time, I'd always thought she'd simply abandoned me. I think knowing that was what allowed me to accept her apology later, and understand her reasons for leaving like she did.
Yes, I would at least like to know what my father looks like, and my half-sister, too; but I think I'm lucky in the world of adoption, to know as much of my family -- biological and adopted -- as I do. Mom has been hinting lately about me going out to Washington to spend some time with Julie and meet my half-brother, Josh, and I may just do that this fall. If I play my cards right and things work out for a coule of my net friends, I may just go out in September, visit Julie, and attend a wedding!
Life ~ Doctors and hospitals ~ Growing Up Different ~
Love ~ Frustrations ~
