When I was a pregnant 17 year old and made the choice (even though it was a forced and coerced choice) to give my son up for adoption the impact of this choice was not yet fully realized. Even as i signed those papers, giving up my rights to my child I couldnt see the forest through the trees. I didnt have anyone telling me how hard it would be. No one to tell me that the grief and regret that I would feel at times would be all consuming. That birthday's and holidays would come with happiness, but also with an immense sadness that presses down on my soul. That for every day that I have that is wonderful and full of promise that there would be equally as many where darkness and grief would be all I know. Yet through all of this, there is a boy out there...who looks like me and is part of me. Who loves, and laughs and makes this world just a little better because he is in it and who one day...hopefully will know ME. Not just as his birth mom, but as someone who has loved him his whole life. Who has wished and dreamed about the things I want for his life and who wants nothing more then to hear the words "I love you too" echoed from his mouth.
My life hasnt been happiness and roses and unicorns poop rainbows. Looking from the outside in it appeared I had a wonderful life. That I was LUCKY to be adopted by my mom and dad. And I WAS and am lucky to have my father. He has his faults as all parents do, but he loves me unconditionally and I am without a doubt his daughter and I have never questioned his love for me.
My mothers love was conditional....conditions that I rarely ever met. I cant remember a time when I felt my mother loved me as her daughter. When my little brother was born...her biological child, that was it. If she could have gone back 14 years in that moment and not adopted me she would have. She certainly choose to forget about me and pretend I didn't exist after that point, and acted like I was a giant inconvenience and a pay check before that. She made it very clear how she felt at her funeral where I wasnt even mentioned and it was like I had never existed. That the 400 people who were there didnt even know she HAD a daughter let alone 5 grandchildren. My dad used to think I was exaggerating...until he saw with his own eyes the way it was. My mother was sick...mentally sick. She wasnt normal, because normal people dont do that. I used to blame myself for along time. Wondering what I did, why she loved my brother as her child and not me, why she didnt care what happened to me, or about me or even want to know me. I used to believe it was something I did when really it was nothing I did. I deserved a mom. I still deserve that. She didnt deserve to have me as her daughter. She didnt deserve to have 5 amazing grandchildren and she certainly doesnt deserve the tears that I will never again shed because of her.
-The Squished Hippie
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