What If?

I am not a big “what if” person. That is just not something I can relate to. Often I see people condemning “what if” scenarios as crazy-making. I don’t condemn, because frankly whenever I do indulge in scenarios not lived I get a lot of insight rather than frustration.

Sometimes I just get more questions, and I am partial to questions.

I remember when I was first in reunion all those years ago, and I was still in a phase of being open about adoption with my friends were real kids, they would ask, “What if your mom had raised you?” with a ton of curiosity. My answer was always the same, “But she didn’t”. I couldn’t relate to going down a path that was so irrelevant in my mind. I was having a hard enough time dealing with what did happen. There was no room in my mind for what might have happened.

I have had a really intense work week, that involved lots of meetings. Meetings with really excited people. People who feel like they have been cheated, people who feel accused, people with a lot of emotional needs, even though in theory– my work is supposed to be absent of emotion. Practice-theory-practice-theory always runs through my brain, they seem to be such divorced realities.

I feel like I have sat through an incredible amount of meetings in this last week, listening to people with their emo problems only to respond like a robot, “But that is irrelevant” Which always blows my mind because I am sitting there getting paid to say, “that is irrelevant” like they couldn’t come up with that themselves. Which I guess they can’t and maybe its not, at least to them. Legally, yes, emotionally, no.

So one of the things I started thinking about on my many drives home, “what if I had been kinder to my mother when I met her? How would our relationship be different today?”

My mother sees a lot of me in Issy. I think this has been misunderstood by my adoptee friends that know of the connection she makes. She is quite aware of the differences between Issy and me, but there is a commonality, that I at least think is accurate.

I mean there are a lot of adoptees, at least on line that talk about their longing for their mother, their romance with her, putting her on a pedestal. Issy and I, enlighten me if I am wrong Issy, were more like, “Wait just a minute here lady, didn’t you leave me in a hospital by myself at my most vulnerable hour?”

We, Issy and I, were/are self-protective. I am not sure that is a bad thing.

But now my What if, what if I wasn’t like that?

What if I came into reunion with a softer, more open heart? On the other hand, what if I came into reunion needier and more demanding?

I never thought my mother could heal me. In our first meeting, one of the things I asserted, in explaining my life and the troubles, which were impressive, real honest to goodness troubles. I said that I didn’t believe you could trick-out someone’s destiny. I blamed my troubles on my fate vs. my adoption. Maybe I was right? Who knows?

I never thought my life would have been trouble free had my mother kept me. I don’t think that now. I think life per se is a lot of trouble. I am glad to have the trouble of life, that is true.

What if I had been less aloof and more caring, what if I had understood her position more than I did? What if I had let her touch me? As an older woman, older at least than I was when I met her, and I was all prickly-pear–what would have happened then?

My mind goes into two distinct places.

The first, the most self-protective, says your mother didn’t have any support, in fact she had anti-support. She created in her life the same situation that was true of my birth. Her life didn’t support me in it. Her husband said, “no step-children” He didn’t say, “my God, how can I help you?” Not that I want to minimize how hard this can be on spouses.

It is.

Mine basically did the same thing, but my reaction was “fuck off”

The epicenter of this disaster was my mom and me though. I wouldn’t accept the lack of support, it pissed me off. Of course I was never abandonded while pregnant, so I didn’t have that frame of reference.

So what if I had allowed myself to be vulnerable and loving just to get absolutely shattered by the reality of her situaton? Would I have survived? I don’t know.

As it was, I was self-protective, aloof.

What if I wasn’t? What if I was kind, what if I believed her story? What if I hugged her when I saw her, what if I was willing to give more than a handshake?

Well that would have been very challenging given what she said to me, given her attitude. Of course that is me, my personality interpreting that. Maybe I shouldn’t blame myself so much.

I know that some natural mothers consider me abusive, because I don’t see things from her perspective as much as they do. I know that those women don’t consider their child’s point of view. They call their children names and want to be nurtured by their children.

My mother is not of that extreme.

Perhaps, if I had been more kind, we would have a better relationship today. Perhaps a warm embrace would have strengthened her. She could have had more of a basis to relate to all those that she loved that were anti-me. She could have felt more secure, more loved.

She could have rejected the bullshit that she was not good enough.

Perhaps.

All I know, is that after thinking this through, with all the many outcomes that could happen—I am more interested in being kind to my mom. That underneath all the tremendous hurt and it is profound. I will never discount the tremendous hurt that I experienced. Ever.

Underneath my hurt is love. I want my mom. And this doesn’t mean I reject my adoptive mom, I love her too. I have also been reading Dawn’s blog, called, “this woman’s work” and her adopted daughter claims at one point that she would like to chop up her sibling into the ravioli, the irony of course is we adoptees are the ones chopped up and put into the ravioli, it is our identities, hearts, souls that are divided and denied to ourselves.

And this is Joy’s Division.