Hard birthday thoughts and feelings…

Fair warning, swear words and pain included…

Trauma. We all have trauma at points throughout our life and there is nothing we can do to escape that, but I’m getting tired of having that visitor keep visiting, especially on the day I was born, a day meant to celebrate, a day that also happened recently. Another birthday that never fails to reminds me that I’m different, special in an ugly way of unworthy of even being acknowledged by some family members from both sides. Pain from the realty of what happened the day I was born, left, and all that has happened since that fateful day another bastard was born.

Oh, to be a naïve child again who loved her birthday, a day that soon became a day fraught with dueling emotions and a mask put on to make other people feel good.

A day I now approach knowing every memory will come up, a day I’m supposed to love, and in a way, still do, but now a darker side exists than mere wishes of knowing who I was born to be. A side that includes the reality of what happens when a family is deliberately broken; permanently, and yes, I can blame it on societal mores at the time that were real and present, that knowledge doesn’t fix the feelings though. I can blame it on a bad experience and an incompetent intermediary, but that’s just giving a pass where none is deserved. You see, I have a sister who found out about me before our mother passed away; who also went to indescribable lengths to make sure I knew, that I, as the first-born of her mother, was not welcome into her family. That memory is always present just beneath the surface, my birthday brings it forward from the recesses of my mind, reminding me of her superiority by the mere nature of her birth over a lowly bastard sister that came in the form of a letter from a lawyer; a letter that made it absolutely clear, if there ever was a day her family wanted anything to do with me, they’d let me know, until then, just to fuck right off.

I can’t begin to explain the feelings receiving that letter evoked inside me; feelings that even my husband’s reaction after reading it, didn’t limit the pain it wrought, that it still holds. That pain was mitigated somewhat by having aunts who’d already welcomed me back into the family; and that even if my mother never saw me, let alone hold me the day of my birth, that at least my grandmother and aunt peered through the nursery window to get a glimpse of me.

How the fuck are adoptees supposed to reconcile their personal story; the personal stories of their friends who are adopted; the sheer number of adoptees living with stories filled with pain, and sit quietly by while the world celebrates families being broken so babies can be turned into more adoptees? Platitudes of adoption is so different today are valid to some degree; but you can’t ever un-break what was broken, and it must be broken for an adoption to happen.