The Loss I Don't Talk About

At the age of 17, I gave a child up for adoption. It was the hardest thing I had done in my life to that point. And at that time, I had no way of knowing how the loss would haunt me like a death. It's like a death. Only you chose it, so do you really "get" to grieve it like a death? 

Everything about this is different from any other loss, relationship, entity I've ever encountered. I can blame the gods, the devil, the ex, my youth, Satan himself, drugs, whatever you can think of. But at some point, I have to look in the mirror and own my choice and own the depth of the loss. Two very separate things. I had a part to play. I also suffered a great chasmic loss like I had only thought I could understand. 

Fast forward 17 or so years. I got a letter in the mail. She wanted to communicate, if only by letter, and get to know me! I was unprepared for this in reality. I had all these fantasies in my head of how this should go and how she'd just know what an agonizing decision I had made and how much I wanted the very best for her. 

I guess to go forward, I have to go back, to the beginning, to my days as a 17 year old, and the process that took me to relinquish my rights. The summer before my senior year of high school, I was obsessively in love with a boy who never wanted to lose me, but also wanted whatever (whoever) else he could get. This threw me into the clutches of some of the bleakest and blackest depression I had known so far in my young life. I couldn't drink it away, I could smoke it away, I couldn't numbify it away. I wanted "the boy" to SEE me, to LOVE me, to SHOW UP. But that wasn't the case. He was out cruising the world for a good time, and I was left crying my lonely eyes out. So one night as he left to hang with his buddies, leaving me in desperation and catastrophic loneliness, I emptied my Mom's pills into my system. Fortunately (?) for me, the contents of her cupboard were not lethal. Mostly I ingested muscle relaxers. And a lot of them. Which made me weak and sleepy. Not dead. Much to my chagrin. But slow. I would say I was moving in slow motion. I spent the better part of the night trying to walk the 5 or 6 short blocks from where my "boyfriend" lived to my parents' house. But I kept falling asleep. I'd wake up minutes and hours later only to be in the same place or to only be a few feet closer to my destination. Boy did I get in a lot of trouble when I finally came stumbling in at 5:30 in the morning.  

In the midst of living like this, I mixed up my birth control pills. I wasn't sure what I had taken and when and finally I just gave up on that, thinking I'd just get my period and start over and all would be well. 

So here I am, the girl who despised her family (take normal teenage angst and multiply it by 10), adored her boyfriend... the boy who ignored her at best and misused her at most opportunities, and extra hormones and not enough responsibility to keep a baby from happening. 

A baby. A new, sweet, little being. Someone who could love me. A friend. Someone to need me. I wouldn't be all alone. And for nine months, I wasn't. I had this little companion growing inside me. Like a cherub. 

Then I started to weigh the relationship I had with my parents. It was disastrous. They didn't believe in me or trust me. Not that I'd given reason to, but at 17, that's not the part I saw. I just saw opposition. And the fight for control. For as long as I could remember I had wrestled with my parents, my mother in particular, to determine who was in control of my life. The harder I fought to control my destiny, the harder she countered me. So if I lived at home, and let's face reality, where else would I live, I would be in constant struggle for the control over my child's life, the decisions about what was best according to me or to my parents. Who would be the author of that story. It looked like a recipe for disaster to me. Hopeless. That's what it looked like. 

I tried to weigh out the possibility of NOT living with my parents. The idea of living on my own, or with "him." And that looked pretty bleak. No skills and talents. No resources for college. What if I managed to get into college, then what? I'd have to work also. So when would I get to see and care for this baby? Between school and work and boy? There's no way to make this work. No money to pay for school, groceries, daycare, etc. No time to study, nurture a child, cook and clean, and live. How would I make it work? 

What if I tried to separate from "the boy?" That's when the nightmares began. The nightmares of him, breaking into my parents house, shooting my parents and stealing my baby. 

I had to protect the baby.

What about parental rights? He told me that he'd get the baby and his sister would help raise it and he'd only have to watch over it til it was like 9 or so and it could take care of itself, just like he did. Part of me knew that he didn't have a snowball's chance to take the baby, but part of me just cringed in fear. 

I read up on potential parents. I specified town size, minimum parental income, parent beliefs and testimonials of faith. I chose carefully. My baby would KNOW that I placed it in the most loving home I could possibly find with the resources at my disposal. 

And so I did. 

Again, flash forward. Seventeen or so years. And my "baby" wanted to ask me questions, talk to me about her life, about my life, to know about life where I was at. I had read about babies given up for adoption and how the placing them from their biological homes to another family left them with intense abandonment issues. How they harbored anger at their parents for not wanting to know them. How they struggled to understand. I had read this stuff. I had heard it and seen it in kids who'd lived it. But I knew. I knew in my heart of hearts that my journey would be different. My baby would know how much I loved her and would adore me and her parents and we'd have this miraculous relationship and the world would be jealous. 

But it didn't play out this way. My daughter, this child, young lady, our relationship would ebb and flow. She'd draw near and then withdraw. She'd tell me about her life and then close me out. She would complain about her parents, but stayed angry with me. I was baffled. Confused. Naive even. 

I had this whole fairytale written out, played out, in my heart and mind. Reality was just not working out the same way. And one time, in the ebb. I retaliated. Said no more. Fuck you very much, but my heart can't take this. Like the spoiled alcoholic princess that I was, I protected my heart in the way I knew how.... nuclear. With as much fall out as possible. For as long as possible. 

Obviously, this is an over simplification. Told from my perspective only and even at that, every single part seems over-simplified here. 

But once you burn those bridges, then what? Ten years, twenty years, however many years later, when time and distance have allowed for some growth and introspection, then how does one deal with this loss. The loss that hurt twice. or actually more than that. But twice I made a choice to live without my child. And I don't feel like I "deserve" to grieve the loss. The devastation is still there. Whether I earned the right to feel it or not.