Time does not bring relief, you all have lied, who told me time would ease my pain…

So starts Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Sonnet 2, which ends with,

And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

This poem was playing in the back of my mind at the end of my last post. It occurred to me, who I really miss most is myself. The unrealized self that lingers inside of me, that I try in a variety of ways to revive, but is I fear, doomed to be a specter.

How frustrating it was to enjoy those happy moments of feeling happy, affirmed, valuable, to have them undercut by something that never was. The ability of my family to see me as valuable. Not just me, but the peculiar combination of qualities I embody. My expression of life.

I was certainly valuable to my aparents, in my body, they very much wanted a girl-child. I was that. They just had some different ideas about what a girl-child might be. They really did their best to accomodate my differences. I believe that. They were facing a much more difficult task than they were lead to believe they would.

How could I be so contrary, so clumsy, so opinionated? They scratched their heads. Sometimes in frustration they got angry. I had a nice house, nice friends, nice clothes, nice family, why wasn’t I nice?

The thing was, I was extraordinarily compassionate as a young child, so much so that is was detrimental to me, I very much wanted to take care of them. I expressed it in a way they could not decipher.

My natural family can be very loving too, they are capable of it, my mother did try to eke out a tiny piece of her life where I could exist. My grandparents were superficially kind to me. My natural family certainly loves each other, the system of people that exists outside of me. They could not, however see my value, or as valuable, as needing to be nurtured or worthy of that. Someone else was supposed to do that for them. Although I have a hard time being convinced that, that was a real concern, the bigger concern was that they not have to face shame and embarrassment, and what happened to me was secondary, if considered.

I don’t think any of it was malicious.

One of my favorite cliches though is, ‘your house burns down, whether by arson or accident, you still have to deal with a burned down house’

None of them could handle it, so they left it to me.

Like I said, I don’t think it was premeditated or intentionally cruel, they would have loved it, if I could have magically had my needs met by some force that didn’t interfere with their wants or needs.

Life doesn’t work like that, human babies aren’t built like that. It took me a long time to realize that not being able to meet my own developmental needs, was not my own fault. I took a lot of that on myself.

The first time I felt really valued was in college. Oh sure, lots of people had cared about me before, I had wonderful friends, boyfriends who claimed love, etc., but it was always in the context that I was some adorable misfit. I had one boyfriend who always called me his, “changeling” because he saw me as somehow ethereal. Which I am in a way. People failed to see how really earth-bound I am, goverened by all the same laws of physics and human development as everyone else.

When I showed up at school, University school, I remember I got a new boyfriend straight away, it was short-lived. He came up and told me he knew I had a little boy, which was better than a ring through your nose at the time for shock value. “Is his name Max?” he asked. Which I thought was an absurd question.

“No” I didn’t elaborate.

“I would like to have a little boy some day and name him Max, you know after the book, “where the wild…”

“Yeah, I know the book” I interrupted. What a goof, I thought.

“You look hot in that shirt you know” I was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt. It was a warm August day.

“I am not hot, I am perfectly comfortable” I deliberately misinterpreted him. He tried to correct me, I gave him a look that wouldn’t let him. He was cute though, and had a car. I didn’t, which is kind of hard when you have a child.

A few weeks later, we were sitting with some other students, older, wildly sophisticated and cool in my eyes. The star of the dept. a young man, asked me again about my baby. “Why do you have him?” I was a complete anomaly.

“I don’t know, just felt like it” I answered, I mean how does one answer that question?

“Well why didn’t you have an abortion?” a girl asked.

“I loved him from the moment I found out about him” I answered, feeling very hot for real this time and put on the spot.

“Well why didn’t you give him up for adoption?” the star-boy asked.

That was a hard one, by that time I had already stopped talking about adoption, and here I was being forced into it, even though it wasn’t my own.

“Well, when I was pregnant, and people talked to me about that, I thought, if I give him up for adoption they will name him Joshua or Christopher, and this is not a little Joshua or Christopher, this is a little freak, and he will need the comfort of other freaks”

Star-boy smiled, “but you are not a freak, you are really special, you didn’t give him up becaue you knew he would be really special like you”

I laughed, “well I guess that is a matter of perspective”

“No it isn’t” star-boy answered.

I was embarrassed by his flattery. The girl who had asked me about why I didn’t just have an abortion, smiled and said, “I am glad you didn’t have an abortion.”

“Me too, me too” I answered.

It just grew from there, people saw me there. People valued me and sometimes confronted me. I had one friend who said at one point. “When I met you, I knew that is the girl I wanted to hang out with, you seemed so smart, funny, cute, you had great clothes, (I used to) that girl is my people, I thought. Then I got to know you better and there were some days I didn’t even want to be in the same room with you. The days you wouldn’t talk. As light as you are, you can be just as dark”

We were in the library when he said that. I looked at him for a long time. It was a bit hurtful, but I was happy that he said that nonetheless. I think he confessed that after my break-down. I can’t necessarily come up with an accurate timeline. He then looked chagrined. “I hope you are not mad at me” he followed-up.

“No, what you said to me sounds really truthful, like good information for me, something to take into consideration”

That is true about me. As Cara used to always say when she would get frustrated with me and I would protest, “but I didn’t say anything“

“You don’t have to say anything” she would respond.

So they weren’t just fan/friends, they were real friends, people who cared enough about me to tell me not so flattering things at times.

Some of those people I am still lucky enough to be in sporadic touch with.

I had one professor who was especially intuitive, I ran into him years later at an opening. Tomtom was with me, he took me aside. “You’ve got a really solid kid there,” he commented, “You know I have often wondered about you two, knowing how you struggled in the past, (God, everyone knew, yuck) how you were doing, but look at him, he is remarkable, a really grounded kid”

“Yup” I smiled, and exited the conversation, I really hadn’t wanted to be reminded of my struggle. It is very embarrassing.

I have to forgive myself though. I was trying to do something quite impossible. Build a foundation for myself, by myself, while attempting to parent.

All the mistakes I made with Tomtom though, one message has gotten through to him, which is obvious by the way he carries himself. He always knew he was valued tremendously. He is valued tremendously by me.

We got to hang out the other day, and I was showing him pictures of lolcats and loldogs on the internets, much to his dismay, and a few adoption jokes came up, as will pretty much anywhere, the look on his face, because he is another who doesn’t have to say anything, was hurt. I wonder if he is hurting for me or him? I don’t ask, it seems too tender.

I am happy though that he feels valued, I realize how much I miss that for myself, I realize that there is a part of me, that no matter what I have experienced is still whole and unharmed, deep inside my soul, (if I have one).

I wish she had gotten that validation, that valuing in her humanness. I wish I could have been more solid. More encouraged and blossomed more fully. I think the people who kept that from me would in fact not find that anything was taken from them to have encouraged and cared not only about me, but for me.

I am going to get on my horse and ride!

lollers.

I have to release the idea that I can build those things for myself, and that living in this state of division must make it as comfortable as I can.

So now I dedicate my other favorite poem to myself, and all those adoptees in the universe who are also struggling with the loss of self. Kisses to us!

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don’t even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me– the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house–, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,–
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…

Rilke

Yes, we are beloved, at least by me.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxo