I haven't posted a lot this month, April hasn't been a good month for me for the last 36 years. My daughter's birthday was the 21st and it's one of the hardest days of my life, since I've never seen her. You would think that after all this time, I'd have learned how to deal with the loss, but I don't think giving a child up for adoption against your will is something you ever get over.
I have so much resentment against my mother over that, it's one of the reasons I refuse to have anything to do with her. The first thing she wanted to do when she found out I was pregnant (I was 17 the summer I got pregnant, before my senior year of high school) was make me have an abortion. She was madder than hell when her gynecologist told her I was too far along for that. So she searched around and found a Catholic home for unwed mothers and shipped me off there in January of my senior year (heaven forbid anyone should know her daughter was unmarried and pregnant in 1972). She didn't know that I had told my friends all about it (when she found out it wasn't the big secret she wanted it to be, she blamed it all on my dad's sister-in-law, who didn't have anything to do with telling anyone anything). My dear mother also didn't bother to tell me that my aunt and uncle had volunteered to take me in and help me with the baby when it came. All I heard was "how could you do this to me" and "if I had known you were going to be out screwing around, I'd have put you on the pill", this in spite of her accusations that I was out fucking every guy I ever looked at from the time I hit 14 (and I was a virgin until I was 17, but she'd never believe that). Then, after she shipped me off to the home, she didn't tell anyone in the family where I was, other than my dad's mother (who must have been in agreement with her, since she didn't bother to tell anyone else in the family where I was). My mother also told me that my dad said if I didn't give up my baby, I couldn't come home (I don't know if this was true or not, I've never had the nerve to ask him, but I kinda doubt it. My mother is the one who runs the family, dad is one of those "don't rock the boat" people, my mother, if she doesn't get her way, will not only rock the boat, she'll fucking sink it). The guy who got me pregnant had gone back to Memphis with his family, but came back to town for a visit, found out I was pregnant with his kid, and went to find me. My mother refused to tell him where I was, and no one else knew, so he went back to Memphis and I didn't see him again for another 4 or 5 years, and by then, it was too late to do anything. All I know about the family who adopted her is what Lutheran Social Services told me, which was that they couldn't have kids and had already adopted a boy, and wanted a daughter. I don't know if she knows she was adopted, or if she's tried to find me or her dad (hell, I don't even know if they put his name on her birth certificate with mine). About five years ago, I signed up online with an organization in Arizona that helps adopted children and birth parents reconnect, but I haven't heard anything from them or anyone else.
My mother considers her first grandchild to be my brother's daughter, who is 2 years younger than my daughter. I told my sister-in-law one time that I would love to see the look on my mother's face if my daughter ever came looking for me (since she'd probably go to their house, it was my address when she was born). Evidently she told my mother I was looking for my daughter (I wasn't, at the time) because my mother called me up and read me the riot act, said it was over and done with, that she wasn't my daughter anymore, I had given her away, blah blah blah (I think it really pissed her off when I got pregnant with my son 3 years later and refused to give him up like she wanted me to). But I wasn't living at home then, I'd been on my own for 3 years (because she dumped me in Spokane with her little brother when we went on vacation the summer after I graduated from high school, the August after my daughter was born). I didn't even tell her I was pregnant until the month before my son was born, and if they hadn't been coming to Washington on vacation and expecting to see me, I wouldn't have told her at all. When I did tell her, she expected me to give up my son too, and I told her "I don't live with you anymore, you can't tell me what to do with my life, and no, I'm not giving him up." I really don't know if that was the best decision I could have made, for my son, at least. I know that he was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and in spite of me not knowing the first thing in hell about being a good parent (I tried not to be an abusive bitch like my mother, but I wasn't always successful), he turned out to be a damned good man (in spite of me, because of me, I don't know).
I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I had been able to go and stay with my aunt and uncle and keep my daughter, but at the same time, I'm glad I have my son in my life (and I probably wouldn't have had him if I had kept my daughter).
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