3.11.2011

how i came to be

A fifteen year-old child, brown hair, blue eyes, five feet eight inches tall had a singular encounter with a brown-eyed, brown-haired male, age unknown.  She was Roman Catholic, he?  Well, it's not on the paperwork.

Where I'm from, adoptees have no rights to information.  There's a statewide adoption database, and adoptees can file pages of paperwork in order to be listed on the database.  Birth parents can also join the database.  Both parties have the option to choose whether or not to fully disclose all of the pertinent information: name, address, medical history, et cetera.  Birth parents can choose to let the adoptee know if there are siblings, as well.

The information in the first paragraph is all I have.  Fifteen.  I have had some babies, and it was a lot of work, a lot of tired, a lot of mixed emotions and freaking out and some really scary things.  Being pregnant is a completely weird experience.  Even after the number of babies I've had, pregnancy is still new and wondrous and scary and mystifying every single time.  

But to be fifteen years old, and pregnant with the baby of a man you had met once?  I cannot imagine what that would be like.  In my innermost being, I feel like everything was not right when my birth mother got pregnant.  I worry about that young girl.  Did she agree?  Was she raped?

Sometimes I mourn for her, with her.

I think she'd like me.  I hope she'd like me.  I hope she would look at me and my husband and my beautiful children and be glad that she didn't get an abortion.  I am thankful every single day that I was given a chance to live.  She didn't have to let me grow in her body, she didn't have to go through the pain of labour and childbirth just to have a nurse place me in the arms of a social worker and take me to who knows where and do God knows what.  She didn't have to become "that girl" who (gasp!) had a baby out of wedlock as a sophomore in high school.

But she did.  And if I ever meet her, I will show her pictures of my babies and I will thank her for all of the beauty and the ugly and the happiness and the hurt that I have ever experienced. 

I am alive.  And I live like it's serious business.  Because when not being alive and not having the opportunity to experience love and beauty and good food and happiness and even a really ugly cry is something that could have been?  It's serious.  And Sweet Jesus in Heaven, am I ever grateful.

4 comments:

  1. I am speechless...and that is a very rare occurrence indeed,

    Living like every moment counts is something we should all strive for. Can I walk with you?

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  2. and cue the weeping.

    seriously.

    xoxo and glad you are you and here too!

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  3. Glad you are here as well. I'm adopted but I was adopted by a family member and actually know who my birth parents are, and sadly sometimes I wish I didn't.

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  4. i am a birth mother and i feel blessed to have found your blog because it has given me a new perspective. i have been so afraid of finding my daughter because of how she may feel about me and what she may do or say. i think about her all the time and i have so much i want to say to her, to tell her how much i love her and why i made the choices i did. her half-brother died this week and it brought it all home to me that there is a lot she needs to know about her biological family and probably wants to know. you made me realize that she may be grateful and not bitter, and want to know us so she can share her life too. i want to know all about her...if she is happy and well. i never had any other children, she is the only child i ever had, and i have missed her terribly every day of my life.

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