WHAT PART OF YOU, IS PART OF ME?

When I reconnected with my aunt a year ago, she told me that my birth mother was a terrible person and a terrible mother. This has been a hard pill to swallow. How could this be the person I came from? Surely, she is wrong. Nevertheless, I believe my aunt, not sure why, except she’s available and my birthmother isn’t. Also, there were other things that my birthmother wasn’t truthful about. 

I wanted so bad to believe all that my imagination thought about her. My child self was hoping she was someone that was just too busy to have a child, too busy and she would come back one day to get me. I looked for her constantly as a child and into my teen years. At the store, at the fair, at the park and at my school. Even some of my friend’s mom’s I suspected could be my “real” mom. Somehow, I knew that I knew her or had seen her before.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love my parents who raised me and for all intense and purposes they are my real parents. They gave me the life I deserved. They gave me wonderful grandparents, my own bedroom, new clothes and vacations every year. Even though I wasn’t the favorite between my brother and me, I knew I was loved. 

There was always a question, who was this mystery woman who left me? And would I ever see her? And did she miss me?

When I was writing letters to her 19 years ago, she said a lot of things.  She said she went back for me 2 years after I was born and she always loved me. I always doubted what she wrote. Partially because I am adopted and it’s hard to believe that someone who loves you would be able to leave the hospital without you and never see you again. Also, my intuition was not to trust her and not to believe her. Her daughter would later confirm some of the untruths she told me.

When I heard her sister talk about her as such an awful person, it was very difficult, hard to hear. This was my blood. How much am I like her? Do I have any of her features or personality traits? Honestly, I hope I am not at all like her, there didn’t seem to be much good stuff.

It does make you wonder. I know many people that look like their parents; have the same talents or sense of humor, same body type or same stature. I am always wondering. Who am I? I’m always looking for my identity and where I fit. 

There is a lot to be said for nature vs. nurture. I probably will never know if I have similarities to my birth mother or my half siblings. I do know that my adoptive mother and I have a lot in common. She mirrored for me how to be strong (sometimes too strong), how to be a hard worker, how to manage my money and how to take vacations. 

I feel like I have survivor guilt. I was the one that got away. My aunt says that I was the lucky one, the one that never had to deal with the abusive ways of my birthmother. The one that got the better life. I think she is right. I think my siblings think that too, which is why they don’t want to have contact with me. Like I have something in me that is her and they can’t get too close to that. I am not better than they are for having a different life and I certainly didn’t have any control over the events in 1962. 

Would it have been different if I had been kept? Would that have changed the course of several people’s lives? It seems it would have. Giving me away was the catalyst for the rest of my birthmother’s life. It seems none of the three siblings speaks to each other and are not friends. 

In talking to my aunt, my birthmother lived the high life both before and after getting pregnant with me. The family had no idea she was pregnant, she just stayed away from everyone for nine months she said. She lived large, fancy clothes, many boyfriends and traveled a lot. A baby would have been a huge damper on that lifestyle.

I have a brother 6 years younger than me; she had a daughter a year later and 10 years after that another son.  She was married and divorced three times and died at 59 after being very sick for years. 

I pushed her to meet me. I asked her in every letter I wrote her.  She never would. In the two years we wrote letters and exchanged pictures she always said when she got better we would meet. Our meeting never happened. She died before it could. If I knew then what I know now, I would have driven to her house 5 hours away and knocked on her door. I would have made her see me. 

I realize now that I have never properly mourned her. I heard of her death over the phone. I was at an appointment and my son took the call and called me on my cell phone. 

“Someone just called here,” he says 

“Who was it?” 

“I don’t know” 

He gave me a name and I knew instantly it was her daughter. 

“Who is that?” He badgered me until I told him.

I called her back when I got home. She was calm and said she had found my letters to her mother. She had read some of them and answered some of my questions that I had already received answers to. Her answers were different than I had heard before. The light that I had seen my birthmother in was dimmed a little by the stories told to me. 

There have been several different mourning’s I feel. The one when I was a baby and realized she wasn’t coming back, I was to carry on and make do. When I found her and she refused to meet. When I found out that she wasn’t the person I thought she was and then when she actually died.

So much loss. On so many levels. You think it doesn’t affect your life but it does in odd little ways. I wanted connection to what was never to be. My little girl inside wanted to find her mother and have her be everything she dreamed. 

Just for a moment, I wanted to not be adopted.