Good night, sweet prince.

This is my farewell to blogging.

I’ve been thinking about this as the responses to my last post got increasingly ridiculous. I know I asked for opinions (and I thank you all for them) and advice, but wow, some of you out there are extremely butthurt and projecting your bullshit onto me, and it’s rather silly.

I’ve had a great time in bloggo land. I’ve made friends who have helped me through so much, and I look forward to a lifetime of paying them back in kind. But I came here because I had no idea what I was embarking on and I wanted to find other people who are part of the adoption triad to advise me on matters both practical and emotional. I got that, but I also muddled through some hard feelings and some insensitive commenters and it wasn’t until my last visit that I realized: oh my goodness, I don’t care.

My open adoption is amazing. My relationship with Paul and Linda is wonderful – and the hurt feelings out there in bloggo world have nothing to do with us. It’s not as if Paul and Linda are aware of all the messiness other adoptive parents or birthparents feel and constantly take those feelings into account when inventorying their own emotions. When I get happy over our adoption situation, I remember that NO THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALL DARK AND TWISTY and then I make myself sad. But hey, guess what? I don’t care that your adoption sucks. I don’t care that you hate or envy your child’s birthparents, or that you hate your birthmom, or that you think your baby’s adoptive parents are the worst. I mean, I do care, because I love you and want you to be happy. But your hurt feelings have nothing to do with me. Paul, Linda, Max Power and I are all parents to the happiest, healthiest, smartest, cutest, awesomest baby boy in the entire world. So basically, I just don’t need your help anymore! This is a good thing! I’m in a great place. I no longer need your approval.

Closing remarks:

- I did the right thing for my son. And yes, he is my son. And yes, I have a claim to him. 

- I didn’t give him away. I just created a bigger family. Paul and Linda are my family. There is a wonderful give and take between all of us: we have all sorts of non-baby-related things to talk about, and we most certainly don’t mooch off of them (we are not the type of people to show up empty handed anywhere, and I don’t think my parents would be able to live with the idea of Paul and Linda paying for anything, ever, when they’re with us). Max Power and I are delightful people, and I’m proud to say Paul and Linda consider us their friends and not just the birthparents of their son.

- Danger is a lucky fucking baby to have all of us, and we are lucky fucking people to have him, and I don’t care what you say: he is going to be a great kid (he IS a great kid) in part because of the decisions we made on his behalf. They were good decisions. I regret none of them.

- I am not perfect, but I am certainly not mentally unstable and in need of psychotherapy. I’m better than I’ve ever been. I’m gainfully and happily employed, in a healthy and loving and fulfilling relationship, and getting better every day. 

- Thanks, again, for pointing me towards Spence-Chapin. That alone made all of the bullshit worth it.

- I love you, and I hope your lives are full of love and joy. I wish each and every one of you the happiness that I have found.

 

Farewell, my dears. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I mean that.

Ownership.

I have somehow come to the conclusion that Linda doesn’t like me and wants to close the adoption. ADOPTIVE MOTHERS, hear me out.

She has never, ever done anything to make me think this. In fact she has never acted anything less than thrilled by my existence and presence. But through some rather convoluted projection, I’ve decided that if I were her, I wouldn’t like me, and thusly she must not like me.

It mostly boils down to the ownership I take of Danger, so this is once again a question for adoptive parents: are you seriously okay with another person having a claim on your child? ‘Cuz I’m just a birthmom and I dunno if I’m even okay with it. When I talk about Danger, I say, “my son.” (When I talk about Linda, I say, “my son’s mother” which is THE WEIRDEST FUCKING STATEMENT.) When I get new pictures or videos, like the one below, I show them to everyone and squeal with excitement about how “my son is walking!” or “look how cute my son is!” and then everyone coos and is all like “yeah, YOUR son is the cutest!” and I beam and puff out my chest and strut around all like “fuck yeah he is.”

Then there’s my parents, who always always always refer to themselves as the grandparents. While I’m fairly careful not to assert ownership in front of Paul and Linda (though I have no rational reason to believe they care at all) my parents are very vocal about their grandparent-ness. Perhaps this is somewhat uncomplicated due to the fact that they are, in fact, Danger’s only grandparents (save Max Power’s dad, but oh god don’t even get me STARTED on that one) and I can’t help but wonder if it bothers Linda that we’ve basically hijacked her family. (I leave Paul out of most of this because he seems to be in a happy little universe of his own, and because I can’t very well attach all of my insecurities and insanities onto the adoptive FATHER, now can I? I’ll leave that to Max Power.)

We’re having a visit on Saturday (FUCK YES) which is our first time seeing him since a) his birthday party and subsequent perfume disaster, b) my move to Staunton and c) the OBC debacle. Now I have nightmares every night about the visit getting cancelled or ruined due to something related to Linda not liking me. Or some weird manifestation I’ve irrationally decided means Linda doesn’t like me. Last night I dreamt that her father was dying and she was Skyping with him during his final hours, which happened to be during our visit, and thus there was a justly pall over the whole day and for some reason prevented us from seeing Danger; instead, we all just sat very awkwardly in the living room while this happened. Dude, her dad is already dead. And why on earth her dying father somehow equals her disliking me (which is how it felt in the dream) is way beyond me.

Okay so here’s my question in true english: adoptive mothers, those of you in fully open adoptions in which you totally cherish the birthmother’s presence – do you kinda hate her a little bit? And no backstory need be involved, because all you really need to know is that Linda is lovely, has never in any way intimated any dislike towards me or my family, and has gone communication-silent only when she obviously has to deal with having a full-time job and a baby (and even then, we’re talking a few weeks at most). So am I absolutely, 100% crazy? I am, aren’t I? Fuck.

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Man delights not me.

So the actors at this theater I’m working in are all a) unbelievably talented b) super, super nice and c) terrifying. They’re terrifying because they’re so talented and nice that I don’t know what to do with my hands whenever I’m around them, and I sort of go all weird. But after a few weeks of being in their rehearsals every day and going to all their performances, I’ve sort of loosened up a bit – not that it matters, as my job is literally to be seen and not heard, so I’m never called on to like, SAY anything – and I’ve friended a bunch of them on Facebook.

The day after accepting my friend request, one of the actors (I’m gonna call him Hastings, because that’s his part in Richard III) who happens to be among the nicest people I have ever met in my life, greeted me by saying, “Well HELLO, Ms. Danger!” (On Facebook, my middle name is listed as Danger, because… obviously.) I giggled, and he said, “Is that your son?”

I decided when I got to Staunton that like, while I have no problem with my adoption situation, I do have a tendency to overshare when it’s not at all necessary. But since Danger is ALL UP ON my Facebook, it’s not like I’m going to lie. I just need to stop telling everyone everything, because frankly nobody cares. So I just said, “Yup!” and the conversation continued amicably.

A few weeks later, I was in the theater and bumped into Hastings. We were making friendly conversation and he said, “So where is little Damian Danger now? Is he with your fiance?”

I’d had the adoption conversation with a bunch of people since I’ve gotten down here: my boss, my fellow RAs charged with chaperoning the TBOHG, and some of the TBOHG themselves (one of whom was adopted and met her birthmom recently – we talk a lot as I’m very interested in her views on the subject) but I sort of stammered through it this time. “Um, he’s in New York, because he was adopted but I’m seeing him next weekend because it’s um it’s a very um open adoption and um you know the timing just wasn’t good and um yeah but it’s good!” As I’m rambling I can see Hastings getting really, really uncomfortable. When I finally trailed off, he said the one thing nobody has ever said to me at the end of that explanation: “I’m so sorry.”

I was floored. Seriously. He apologized again, said he didn’t mean to get so personal, and while I stammered out that it was okay, don’t worry about it, it’s all fine, he said his goodbyes and walked off. Firstly I felt super awkward because I made him feel awkward, and secondly I felt, “Wow – that’s the only appropriate response to this conversation, that’s the response I’ve always wanted to get, and yet… it felt like shit to get it.” I don’t want people to feel sorry for me anymore. I wanted them to, for a long time. I wanted people to recognize the loss that I felt. But the look on Hastings’ face when he told me he was sorry… I knew he GOT IT (he has two babies) and I knew he MEANT IT, and I didn’t want that. It was weird.

Anyway, I’m just trying to distract myself from the fact that I haven’t heard ANYTHING from Paul and Linda in over a week – not since the shit with the OBC hit the fan and I had to ask them if I could speak to their lawyer. Paul said SURE and sent me the contact info, then hurriedly texted again saying, “Wait, let me talk to Linda.” I the get a curt email from her saying, “Can you tell us exactly what’s going on?” so I laid it out in exhaustive detail and told them to take their time reading it and getting back to us. We’ve heard nothing since. Not even about the visit we’re supposed to have next Saturday. We planned it a month ago and Max Power and I have been buying train tickets and booking hotels, but we haven’t heard a confirmation on their end and I don’t want to bother them with more emails or anything, but I have convinced myself they’ve closed the adoption now that it’s finalized. Max Power thinks this is ridiculous and will be actually calling them sometime this week, as I’ve clearly gone waaaay too freaky-outy to deal with this rationally.

Primal Wound opinions on the last post have been very informative; please keep them coming.

No man of woman born.

All the material I’ve encountered about the Primal Wound theory (which is, admittedly, not a lot) bases the idea of an ongoing adoption-related psychological trauma on the loss and abandonment associated with placement. You know, “Mommy didn’t love me, Mommy doesn’t want to know me, Mommy’s absence is the absence of my identity” blah blah blah.

Does it make a difference at all if Mommy is around to say, “I love you, I want to know you, I want you to have your identity”? Primal Wound theory doesn’t (in my knowledge) take openness into account – probably because open adoption is new and primal wound is hopelessly outdated – so it’s all based on the idea that an adopted child, after being FROM HIS MOTHER’S WOMB UNTIMELY RIPPED, creating said wound, will grow up in complete ignorance where it concerns his biology. Like, “understanding the survival mechanism of dissociation helped answer the question that I and so many adoptees had once we woke up from what I call the Great Sleep. How had we so passively accepted that we were not to know the mother and father who gave us life, and to learn the circumstances of our birth and relinquishment” (BJ Lifton). What if the adoptee is never in a “great sleep” because he always has access to his birthparents and his history?

Or is the “great sleep” still there – is that just a way of saying that anybody who accepts his or her adoption drank the kool-aid? Is adoption in all its forms the maker of some incurable primal wound NO MATTER WHAT?

Cuz if it is, fuck it, right? Abortions for everyone.

I’m feeling very macabre today.

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by MY LIFE RIGHT NOW.

I’ve been all doom and gloom on the blog as of late because of the OBC shit. And it’s still an ongoing problem; I worry that Linda is pissed about this whole thing, and that they won’t lend me the support of their lawyer. But I know that fear is probably baseless, and besides, the parts of my life that are unrelated to adoption are so amazing that I feel I need to write about it, even if just to remind myself that things could be oh so much worse.

My job here in Staunton, at the American Shakespeare Center, is so amazing that I constantly have to pinch myself just to make sure I’m not dreaming. As an intern, my job is mostly archiving and filing and writing entries for the ASC interns blog, which is super fun. And that’s what I’ll be doing for most of my time here. But right now, I’m the dramaturg on Philaster, or Love Lies A-Bleeding, which is in rehearsals right now and opens next weekend. Which means I’m in the theater every day, watching the actors direct themselves and make the most out of what is (at best) a very strange and complicated play.

Now, I’m not supposed to speak unless spoken to, and the actors are so talented that nobody really needs my help so my presence is pretty superfluous. But it’s still a joy to be there and to watch them work. And most wonderfully of all, the ASC’s production of Richard III is now up and running, and I get to see it for free WHENEVER I WANT. FOR FREE. And I live NEXT DOOR to the theater. I saw it for the first time on Saturday and then I went again today and I’ll go again as many times as my schedule allows. It’s so good that I vibrate with excitement. I’ve seen a lot of Richard IIIs, and this is by far the best I have ever been witness to. Even though I saw some of the dress rehearsals when the actors were hammering out the fight choreography, I still start at every swing of their prop swords; even though I know the play by heart, I cry every time the incomparable actress who plays Lady Grey weeps in front of the tower, kissing the prop stones and saying “treat my babies well” when those babies are her sons, condemned to die in the next scene. And you guys, even though I love Shakespeare, it still takes a lot for a production to move me the way the text SHOULD move a person. But the actor playing Richard has talent I didn’t even know existed, and I walk out of the theater every day thanking the heavens above that I ended up here.

My job supervising the tiny balls of hormonal genius (TBOHG) on Mary Baldwin’s campus is also really great. The other RAs are MFA students in Mary Baldwin’s Shakespeare program, and they’re amazing and sweet and lovely. The TBOHGs themselves are a challenge and a joy. If only Max Power were here with me, working on his novel, I would count myself a king of infinite space. As it is, when I forget that he is far away and that my son will never have a record of his birthfather, I find that I am so happy it’s hard to contain. I spend every waking moment vibrating with sheer enthusiasm. This place is Mecca, Heaven, Jerusalem, the land of milk and honey. I never want to leave. Now if only they paid me…

I was searching for a FOOL when I found you.

Okay, the saga continues. I’m starting to think a lot of this might be my agency’s fault – not in a malicious sense, but because they were unaware of the legalities concerning amending his OBC and didn’t give me the correct information.

I spoke to my social worker. What I never realized (or thought to question) was that I didn’t get a copy of his OBC at all, not even the bastardized “Baby Boy Razak” one. Turns out it does exist, and my agency has it, which is how they knew it was fucked up. Also, it turns out that fixing that problem would have been very easy – there’s a form on the back of the OBC that Max Power and I could have filled out, signed, and sent back, and it would have been fixed without any tedious paperwork or notaries or money involved, so long as they received it within 6 months of the baby’s birth. But my social worker told me that in order to get it fixed I had to submit a whole lot of notarized paperwork to the DOVR, which I did… and then I waited, and now it’s too late. I don’t know why they never sent me his OBC, but I’ve asked for it now and hopefully they’ll send it. So I guess there’s some good news there: there IS a record of his birth, with my name on it. It lists him as Baby Boy Razak and the father as unknown, but whatever.

I spoke to the DOVR (they don’t make it easy – I left a lot of messages and went through a lot of gratuitously tedious automated menus before I got a human being on the phone). I went through the whole thing with them: I’m the birthmom, I have a copy of his OBC, it’s wrong, I lobbied to get it fixed and you guys cashed my check but didn’t fix it, what gives? They – very rudely – said that if I indicated at the hospital that the baby was to be adopted (which I did, WHILE FILLING OUT THE NAME I LOVINGLY PICKED OUT FOR HIM ON THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE PAPERWORK) that there was nothing they could do – the baby’s been adopted, game over. I asked why it wasn’t fixed prior to the adoption being finalized and the lady said she didn’t know. IS IT NOT YOUR JOB TO KNOW? WHAT DO WE PAY YOU FOR?

She said the only person who has access to the OBC now is Paul and Linda’s adoption attorney. But by access, she really only meant that he can maybe possibly get a copy, but I don’t want a copy, I have a copy, and I want that copy fixed. I said okay, fine, if I get the attorney involved, can he get it fixed? She said she didn’t know (AGAIN, WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO ALL DAY, LADY?) but probably not.

So, I will be emailing Paul and Linda. I will try not to be rude or frantic. I will also be WTFing my agency for dropping the ball so very badly on this one. I know my social worker is going to feel like shit about it, but hopefully it’ll stop them from making the same mistake twice.

I’ll keep you all updated.

On the bright side, if I can’t get it fixed, at least he’s a Razak! Huzzah!