If I ever write a book, I am going to call it that. Today though, I feel more like “Wound of the unknown mother.” I checked with the agency and they have recieved my money to continue searching for my birth father and they forwarded my letter to my birthmom on February 21st. I hope I wrote a letter that will melt her heart on the first read, or maybe by the second or third read thru, she will write back. It’s funny how you can drive yourself mad with hindsight. I keep thinking of other things I could have written, other thoughts I could have tried to convey, but I wrote the basics and tried to not come across too needy, although at the moment, I am very much in need.

I feel like my insides are nothing but pain and I’m so afraid of letting it out. I feel like if I did, it would just consume me. Why the heck doesn’t she want to know me? I mean, logically and intellectually I know the reasons that may be, but the little kid in me doesn’t care at all. I just wish I had some idea exactly what her reasons are. Is she ashamed? Afraid? WHY!? I feel like that song from Sarah McLachlan, “Full of Grace” I know it’s not about adoption but this verse sums it up:

It is so infuriating to know these strangers have my information, the knowledge I want. I have no recourse with them and no faith in them considering how they treated me before. It’s like riding a merry-go-around in a pitch black room with some stranger telling you when to grab for the ring. So powerless and teh info is just beyond my reach.

They have started the search for my birthfather. The searcher was commenting that his name is kind of common and my birthmom didn’t know where he may be but she was working on it now. Sitting here just thinking about it and not being able to be active in the actual search process is driving me crazy. If it wasn’t for the online group chosen-babies.com, I would have already gone out of my mind, or maybe I have. Would you know if you had?

I just finished watching the DMC story. In a word, my reaction is “WOW!” Also a bit of an “ow.” When he asked to meet her and she said yes and then asked if he thought she was going to say no, I was in tears.

I enjoyed it a lot though. Some of his lines were so funny. (private eye for the adopted guy.) Watching him search and go thru trying to find his mom’s name. The phone call where the lady told him he would “that would never happen” about getting access to his sealed birth certificate. I wanted to scream “who the heck do you think you are telling one of us we can’t have our stuff!!!”

It’s cool though that VH1 put this on, to show his story in such a light. The happiness, the pain, the insecurity, the fear, the missing chapter, the reunion. Good luck D, I wish you the best.

So, what did you think?

One of the sites I have linked up to my google home page is “How To of the Day” from wikiHow. The most recent entry made me laugh and think.

Check it out:

http://wiki.ehow.com/Make-Your-Parents-Love-You-for-Who-You-Are

Also check out some of the related wikiHows.

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
And sweetest in the gale is heard.
Emily Dickenson, Poems

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickenson

At my growth group tonight, I tried to explain my last few weeks. I really like this group which is a sort of combo Bible-study/life application group. They want to know, to understand what it is I’m going thru. None of them are adopted, and they seem to get that they probably can’t fully understand it nor will they, but they still want to learn what they can. The driving need to find and know.

One of the members asked how this has affected my faith. I think it has strengtheded it in many ways. I mean, yeah, I prayed to reunite, to get to know my blood and share it with my son. Then again, I’m not dead yet! I have been given a gift, the knowledge that she is alive and while she is alive there is hope I will meet her. There is hope that I will meet my birthfather now, something that I had much less chance of a few weeks ago.

Another person once said to me that maybe finding isn’t part of God’s plan. My reply, “why, have you read his script?” I’m kind of getting sick of the “it’s all God’s plan” thing because it seems like too many people use it as an excuse. I feel it in my bones, that I need to do this. For myself and for my son. We don’t know God’s plan, all we can do is listen to our heart and soul to get a glimpse of it, and then follow it.

I understand that I may fail in this, that I may never get to meet my birthmom or my birthfather. I know that there is a chance I will never know my blood, other than my son. I know that I may need to look into my son’s eyes one day and tell him that he will have to continue the search for our history if he wants to know.

But it isn’t today. Today, I still have hope.

With us, there’s a saying, La esperanza muere ultima. Hope dies last. You can’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything.
Jessie de la Cruz, retired migrant farm worker, quoted in Studs Terkel, Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times

What a weekend. It was a great end to a horrible week. Seeing friends from all over, meeting actors and actresses, running around till my feet hurt every day, drinking Mt. Dew like it was going out of style, occasionally eating, and enjoying talking to a bunch of brits, losing myself in thier sarcasm. (Funny fact, this group of brits seems to think Americans don’t understand sarcasm, I corrected them a bit.)

Its funny, I have always felt at home with this group of people, half of which I know well enough to talk to, a third of which I know enough to say hi in passing and the rest who were probably there for their first time or people I had never met. We are like a big family all coming together just to discuss being a sci-fi geek.

Some of these people are local, some from all over this country, a few from across the pond, yet thru-out the year, I rarely have contact with them. Even via email, although I have many of their email addresses. However, no matter how long since we were departed, when we get back to the con it’s like we were together just a day or two ago. Such camaraderie, such friendship. It just feels so right.

Now if only my birthmom would come around to that thinking.

Personally, I love Sci-Fi. If you could see my DVD collection, there would be no doubt. Stargate, Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battle Star Galactica (either version, ) etc.
What does this have to do with Adoption? This week, it’s about escaping reality for a few days. Today is the start of a local Sci-Fi convention based around the Doctor Who series, a British Sci-Fi show, which has been one of the longest running shows. We have guests from all over the world and tons of fans, shows, stuff to buy, people dressing up in weird costumes, drunk british writers, silly issues, more jokes and sarcasm than one person can normally handle, and Mt Dew.
See, I work at this convention, in th sense that I am in charge of a group of people who make the day to day operations go accordingly, for free. It’s a chance to get out of my daily life, and lose myself in a world of fantasy (as in the Firefly “sarcasm, quick quips, oh you silly person you” type fantasy, not the Captain Kirk “hi, are you female?” type fantasy.) By tonight, I will have drank two six-packs of Mt. Dew and eaten probably one meal. By midnight on Sunday night, I will have probably had about two cases of Mt Dew, four meals, and 6 hours sleep total. By Monday, I will be back to reality, but at least I have the day off.
I love Sci-Fi.

I got a call from the adoptoin agency today. They had talked again with my birthmom. Intially, I was excited to hear this but….

Apparently, they asked her if she would be willing to accept a letter from me. Her reply was that she would rather not but if it would make me feel better, she would. Can you say “ouch? ”

Also the agency will only forward a non-identifying letter. The searcher made a special point to remind me that it cannot contain names, places or other identifying info. I was too stunned to even reply at the time. Now, I’m just pissed.

Then they called back about five minutes later to let me know that they had actually used all the time I had paid for (that would be $450 for six hours of search plus the freebie hour where they actual found her) so it would cost another $75 for an extra hour of searching for my birthfather. If they can’t find anything in the first hour, I will have ton continue paying $75 for each subsequent hour. Also, they won’t start until they get the money. Boy did I go into the wrong field.

I had started to write a post in response to an anonymous comment and the impression I was against adoption. At the moment though, I’m still in a bit of a daze, with a dash of numb tossed in.

I sat in church today trying to listen to the sermon but just thinking about what I was going to tell people if they asked how my search was going and realising I didn’t want to answer them. In some ways, I am ashamed. I know intellectually, there is no reason for me to be ashamed, but the little kid in me doesn’t give a spit about being intellectual. When the service was open and my wife and I walked out, she drew closer to me and put her arm around me for support. I still felt the tears coming and told her I had to go to the car. Normally, everyone meets just outside the church for an informal chat. I just couldn’t do it today.

I need to write a letter. When I was talking to the agency, I asked if I could send a non-identifying letter and have them forward it. The lady told me that she couldn’t unless it was okay with my birthmom but whe would ask. It wasn’t till Saturday, that I truly realised what I had asked; non-identifying. Why would I send a non-identifying, I want her to know who I am. Its like I was afriad of letting her know who I am, but why? I have been trying to wrack my brain to figure out why I didn’t think I could send something with my info in it.

But what to write? Hi, my name is wraiths and I am your son? I had a good life and a few adoptoin issues which made me join two support groups, start a third, create an online group and write a blog? I sitting here in tears because I don’t think you want to know me, again? I don’t want to tell my son that you are afraid to meet us? I would like a picture so that I may look at the face of someone who looks like me?

(Wraith’s note: I really like this quote and it was kind of overshadowed with my news, so I am moving it up.)

I like books, mainly sci-fi and the occasional horror or mysteries.

One of my favorite authors is F Paul Wilson. (If you have never read any of his “Repairman Jack” books, you are missing something. That is, if you like stories that are part mystery, part horror, part equalizer (as in the TV show.) If you don’t, poor you.

Anyway, in one of his books (not a Repairman Jack,) he has a character who happens to be adopted and there is a part where he is trying to explain to his wife why he feels the need to find his roots after being contacted telling him that he is the sole benificiary .

“It’s like having amnesia and being alone on a ship drifting over the Marianas trench; you drop anchor but it never hits bottom, so you go on drifting and drifting. You believe that if you knew where you came from, maybe you could get some idea where you were going. But you look behind you and it’s all open sea. You feel cut off from your past. It’s a form of social and genetic amnesia..”

When his wife said she understood because her parents died when she was a child and she was raised by a family member he says:

“They were gone but at least you had known them. And even if they had died the day after you were born, it would still be different. Because you could go back and look at pictures of them, talk to people who knew them. They would exist for you, conciously and subconciously. You’d have roots you could trace back to England or France or wherever. You’d feel part of a flow, part of a process; you’d have a history behind you, pushing you, toward someplace far ahead.”

She replied that she doesn’t think about those things no one does. His reply:

“That’s because you have them. … You don’t think about your right hand much, do you? But if you had been born with out one, you’d find yourself wishing for a right hand every day.”

Great description though, right? Granted, by the end of the book, the character winds up being a souless vessel for evil to come into the world, but then again it is a horror novel.

The adoption agency called today at 6:00am my time. They located my birthmom and have had contact with her via email, however she does not want contact with me. She did tell them the name of my birthfather and the agency is going to search for him.

So how exactly do I make it thru a day of work?