Joy’s Division

I had a conversation with my mother recently. She mentioned that she didn’t want me to take it the wrong way, or as if she was being flippant, that I had faced a lot more rejection in my life than most people do.

That is true.

I want to write about how that feels but I think I am too tired.

As I was struggling, described in the last two posts, you know what am I doing, what am I not doing et al. The first person I thought of was my BFF Cara. She really is a touchstone for me. She was in New Orleans for most of the freak out, at a Jazz festival. She asked if I wanted to go, and I said I couldn’t afford it, I don’t have any money. She said, “I have money…” because she is awesome and wonderful like that. Of course I couldn’t take her up on it, because no. I have no forseeable repayment in the future. I understand the instinct though because if I did have money, nothing would please me more than to spend it on her.

Years ago when I saw the movie “Sideways” I called her saying although neither of us are near as dissipated the interaction between the two main characters reminded me of us. After seeing the movie she called back laughing and agreeing only letting me know about the scene where Miles breaks into the house to retrieve Jack’s wallet, “I would have been the one breaking into the house!” I didn’t have to tell her she would have been Jack.

I have also always hated Merlot…

Anyway, because we have been friends for soooooooooo long, despite never actually talking about my midlife crisis, which she should be having too btw. I imagined our conversation in my head.

Me: I don’t feel like I have accomplished enough.

Cara: Oh stop you have done x, y, and z.

Me: Yes, but I haven’t done g, h, and i.

Cara: Neither have most people, get over yourself. complete with eyeroll.

Me: I just want more, I want to do more, I want to do something else.

Cara: Okay, then DO it, then we can decide. this she would give a wink and a laugh to, in reference to the time she got so frustrated with me when we were 20 or so and she asked me if I thought she should become a chef. If I thought she was a good cook.

“Okay, why don’t you cook something and then we can decide” I said.

She spent the next seven weeks cooking EVERYTHING. We had seven layer cakes, meringues, elaborate everything I would pick at, and then when it was ready claim I wasn’t hungry. Until she finally blew up at me. She still isn’t a chef but my nerve hitting comment is a long standing joke between us.

There is no replacing longtime friendship.

I saw her, in my mind’s eye, loving me, mirroring me, putting me in perspective. So I got old. I am lucky to have and will only get older. There is nothing wrong with taking stock of one’s situation, there is nothing wrong with setting sights higher.

The things that were surprising with my stock taking were, nowhere on my list of things I want to accomplish does the word adoption appear.

Nope.

I mean I do care about adoptees and their well-being. Personally, while not perfectly, I think I have done more for individual adoptees than I ever dreamed possible. Obviously, there are those that hate me, google my name if you doubt that, yet I have impacted people’s lives, I have been a friendly hand to finding their own self-worth.

It also got me thinking about what the Buddhists call Sangha, the tenet that you learn about yourself through your community. Of course with them it is some type of sacred place where they have decided to be a part of something.

Really though, it is absolutely as common as the flesh that clings to our bones. You only know who you are through who you know. For example, we Americans are convinced that 21 is young now, decades before us it wasn’t. It is more than that though you or me are not capable of being ANYTHING, unless we are reacting to another. The individual disappears.

We are not capable of being strong, compassionate, weak, malicious, vain, loving, visionary, introverted, sexy, repugnant, shamed, proud, in love, loveless without another to make us so. Granted you could argue that you could embody these qualities without human interaction, sure but you may be arrogant surrounded by roaches.

Alone we are nothing.

Which brings me back to adoption. My mother says I call our family weird. I do. They are weird to me. The people who raised me are held on a pedastal, even though I can clearly see some of their faults. It is hard for me to not hold them in the place of righteousness and myself in a place of error.

I am weird to me.

I struggle with considering my good qualities good. They weren’t reflected to me as positive or normal. With my son, I see him and his father’s family laugh happily about their idiocyncraies. They make up nicknames actually and laugh about their odd commonalities.

It just occurs to me that my family has no idea what they took from me when they left me in I am assuming a plastic bassinet, because no one really knows, no one looked upon me, no one looked to see if I was being taken care of before I was placed into foster care.

Then the whole foster care thing is unknown as it “violates my birthmother’s privacy” as if.

I find myself old sure, but I find myself in those that have bothered to love me. I need the reflection, I am saddened by those that ignore and disregard what adoption does to our identity. How we learn about ourselves, we should be more than those that escaped the abortion mill or we should be abortions. It is too much to hold us as both.

This is wending its way to adoption, of course, natch what doesn’t?

So part one things that were circulating coalesced and flocculated.

I have always been a planner, I have day plans, week plans, month plans, decade plans and on. Since I started this blog, I have reevaluated a lot in my life. When I was plotting my life, I hadn’t counted on my interest in Buddhism interfering. My decision to examine what motivated some of my behaviors and investigate my personal experience with adoption has changed me in ways I could have never foreseen.

Back to ye olde crisis though, so like I said, I left college life behind, I mean not in any dramatic fashion, who stays close with their college crowd throughout life? My best college friend, Magisco, and I are still in touch, well in touch for me, I am not the best, most considerate communicator, but I visited her just last year. I have other friends from that period who I am still close too despite my friends being the type to consistently take off for points unknown, spread out in big cities across these United States, if they are in the country.

I have always been attracted to interested people. So right after school, not exactly it was one of those one door closes and another door opens, but the hallway is hell situations. For the first year after school I was quite confused and lost. I dispaired that I would end up with a whistle around my neck yelling at kids to get off the monkey-bars for the rest of my life. The first job I got was at a school program so I could be with Tomtom.

Within a year though, I had my dream job. It really was. It was creative, involved travel, and making really cool stuff. The best part was the other people I worked with creative, smart, funny, salt of the earthers, mostly also young and some of the boys I admit turned my head in ways I shouldn’t have been turning it. Really it was a total set-up, the long hours, the loneliness—

Of course there is always a down side to these kind of environments, giant egos, competition, I mean obviously the inverse of creativity is destruction, and I have never met anyone as mean as those with artistic temperments. It is the ability to perceive, a key ingredient,
that sharpens the knife to such a grade, that it is nearly welcomed by the victim.

Oh and I was a scandal, of course, it is second nature to me, starting with the outrageous act of my birth.

So in this mood of reflection, I googled some of my old comrades. It was shocking, their pictures are all over the web. They are on boards of major things that I would like to be on the boards of. I mean it is not like the people I do keep in touch with haven’t also been pursuing lofty goals, but they aren’t shocking to me.

One woman in particular, who lived to make me miserable while pretending to be my friend, incited my jealousy. There she was smiling like the good sport she always was, one of the chief reasons for my envy. L. was ALWAYS a good sport, when she wasn’t being bitchy and viscious, but she could always put on a show, whereas I was saying exactly what I thought and often all I had to say was, “I am tired”

It is not like I really want to live a life where I am photographed at parties all the time, I have been to those kind of parties. The fancy research doctor I used to date loved that kind of thing and was always fussing at me to hurry hurry before we missed having our picture taken and I would say things in response like, “you are pathetic”

So I am not jealous so much of L.s social success as wanting to want that. That sent me to bed for an entire day, which isn’t really like me. Usually only family can do that to me.

There is a project I really want to take part in, but it is at a gallery a huge exlove is very involved with. It is not that I feel worried that he would threaten my current relationship, it is that I feel like the last 5 years have been pretty much a big fat nothing for me. Me, doing what I always thought I wanted to do— humming along quietly. I don’t want to run into people and have them wonder what happened to me, why have I become such a drifty loser?

I feel like at one point I started to hide behind the responsibilities of motherhood. I mean sure I love being Tomtom’s mom, but I know that it is not an either or situation. I accomplished a lot when he was little.

Where I live, there are a lot of hills, at 6:00 a.m. last Sunday my car was perched at the top of one, the streets were quiet, the view remarkable. There is something psychologically challenging about act of consistently climbing hills. Taking the dizzying vista in before you release and hope your brakes don’t fail.

I found myself asking what exactly am I doing now?

What are my excuses now?