Conditional Surrender

Since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of contacting my biological family again. Surely, my 6 year old brain thought, they must miss me? They must wonder, they must speculate how I’m doing? What I look like now? What I enjoy, and find objectionable? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been in this mindset. I was sure I was missing something. I was envious of all the other kids. In preschool, while all of the parents would sit around the playground and chitchat about the day their children were born, I would sit with my mom as she shifted awkwardly. She didn’t even know me when I was that age. I could sense the discomfort etched in her face, the longing to just be like everyone else. I could relate t to that feeling.
I hated telling people. When my childhood friends would ask why I don’t look like my parents (at all…actually) I would shrug it off, and tell them I looked like my Irish grandmother. My parents even repeated this lie to people who were nosy. When I was finally gutsy enough to actually tell people, their questions were just as I had feared.
“Were you in an orphanage?” they would squeal, eyes rotund with wonder “ Why didn’t anybody want you?”

Such are the scattered memories from my early days. Not that this obsessed my life . Goodness no. I was regular in so many ways. But there has always been something..different in my way of thinking.

I dreamed about how wonderful it would be to see my mother again, and to finally have someone who I could relate to. Someone who would instinctually be like me. Someone who, I fantasized, would love me in such a profound way that I would marvel how I ever lived without her.

When I sought my mother out, she was just as emotional as I had expected. She cradled me (I was 14...so this was highly inappropriate.) She cried, and tucked my hair behind my ears. “My baby, my baby” she kept murmuring. In the perfect world, we would have fallen madly in love with one another again. We would share letters and phone calls, making up for lost time. I would feel wanted, accepted. She would finally do what she was supposed to.

In reality, I found a drunken immature drug addict who loves only herself. I found a father who, despite his good intentions, cannot separate love from discipline. I found a sister who just wants me to get the hell out of her life, so she doesn’t have to share any of what she has worked so hard to maintain.

The disappointment weighs heavy on me. Heavier than anyone will ever know.

I don’t know whether it is the fact that I’m getting older, or the fact that I am too disappointed to bounce back, but I am finally at the point where I can attempt to let it go.

What I was searching for was closer than I had ever imagined.

You Underestimated Me, Hun.

Skipper is the cutest thing in the universe.

And everything is falling into place exactly as it should.

For once, I don't feel guilty for being happy.

I am doing what I am supposed to.

I'M THE FIRST ONE DAVE.

It's all ending with me.