Breakthrough

The past few days, I've been writing back and forth with AM. That in itself is a major step, a step that likely would not have happened had I not gotten to if things had not hit the fan the other morning. I laid all my cards on the table, tired of carrying everything around everywhere with me. It feels good not to be so overloaded. It feels good that things are in the open. I had always complained that if we could just talk, that we could clear up so much of the insecurity on my side and this contact thing would be easier. Ironically, my insecurity stems from the adoption itself, from the notion that responsibility, morality or biology be damned, if someone wants to ignore the shit out of you and hang you out to dry, they will. As a result, I felt it didn't matter if I'm M's b-mom, if I'm the most least threatening person on the planet or if the right thing to do is to honor your word. If she did not want to follow through, hell, she wasn't going to. I kept searching for a reason why, like I did all those years ago, when I found myself pregnant and bearing all the responsibility for it. And as it was then, there was no reason for it. It just is the way it is.

I've read that a lot of b-moms fear the hard stuff with a-moms. There is a notion that we shouldn't make them feel guilty for "inflicting pain on us". But when I addressed the regret comment a-mom made to me, I had a choice. I could have glossed it over, told her that I had no regrets and sounded like I was still drinking the kool-aid. Because that's what she wants to hear right? But that's not why she asked. And that's not the whole truth. And with all the half truths in adoption, with all the fake smiles and dances we do, I had made the decision to be honest. Not bluntly so. But I opened up, told her, yes it is hard to realize that the best thing for your child is that you are not meant to be it's mother. But I believe in my choice even though I question it at times, because it was the best thing I could have done at the time for my child. And that the best thing for MY child was to be placed with HER family specifically. Its hard to be sad about something that you know is the right thing to do. But that this all was was about regret in a sense, a regret that I was too young to handle contact myself after the adoption. A regret that I let them slip out of my life. And I did come in fear, fear that it was too late to change that.

I could tell you that telling AM my fears and my truth was extremely scary. But I know she asked not necessarily to have her ego stroked. She feared me too, and she needed to know if I was at a place in my life where my regrets led me back into her life. That telling me that M is not intersted in knowing me right now was going to send me into a tailspin of hurt and pain and coulda shoulda woulda. I owed it to her to tell her that it wouldn't. And the crazy thing? I think that by doing something scary, by baring my soul, it actually made me unscary to AM. Because she agreed to call me. I've been wanting to talk to her on the phone forever, the way it was before computers, when I was just a kid, not much older than DD, sitting on my daybed in my room on the cordless phone, talking to the only person in my life that I had fully trusted at a time in my life where I felt so scared and alone.

I know it's different now, and chances are it wont be a regular thing. But I see it as an opportunity for us to get to know eachother again, even if it's just to lay groundwork for the future. And for the first time in a long time, it's about as unscary as it gets.