And so....

I have been thinking about what I said in a previous entry about making a deal with the devil.

I know there are far more evil men out there than my Father. He was sick and he was weak, but the devil.........

There was a time in my life when I was very young that my father ruled my world. This is true of most little girls, in our innocence we view that first male figure with reverence. For some, the shattering of this illusion, when we have that moment of seeing them as fragile as everyone else, can be a devastating blow.

I remember calling him 'Buddy' instead of Daddy most of the time. He worked away alot. But when he was home....the funny thing is now, I don't exactly remember what I thought of him when I was a child. Just that he was my buddy.

When I was eight, the protective bubble of my childhood niavety began to show very small fractures.

He was an alcoholic. Got melancholy and angry when he drank. He would inform us that he was going to kill himself, perhaps take a few with him. A few times he locked himself in the garage, shot guns out (I vaguely remember him actually going hunting with them.). A few times the cops were called. When I was eight I got stuck in this. He had been drinking most of the day. Was out in the garage with the door closed. I think my Mother was talking to a friend (or she may have even said this to me) "He is at it again. Not sure if I should call the police or let it go."

Some thing was wrong with my buddy. I could fix it.

I went out to the garage and knocked on the door- I offered to make soup. I momentarily saw down he barrel of his twelve gage. I came to understand later that he never really had the conviction to follow through. He preferred the slow suicide of alcohol and misery.

After that day I was just a little bit nervous around him and he was now just dad.

He was a master manipulator. Had quite the sting to his words. He never laid a hand on me that I recall, but I don't really recall much.

When my Mother died. He booted me and my sister out of the house and then took us to court over tupperware and plastic coat hangers. Periodically would give me his twisted take on the situation, slip me cash and once again we would forage ahead to repair the broken. Inevitably something would crack it further (a drunken rank or receiving a child support check with blood money written in capital letters on the memo line).

I had not lived with him since the age of 11. But I needed an out. I could not stay to but a shadow on my sister's first born.

I went to him. I did not tell him I was pregnant. I could not. He could be vicious and i did not want to risk a way out. Besides it is not that we had the type of Father daughter relationship that allowed for such situations. This was the man, who during one of his more drunken rants told me to keep a cotton ball between my knees so as not to get pregnant.

I simply said that I could not live there any more as I knew that I was not welcome.

This was great news to him. By that point there was no love lost between my sisters and my Dad.

Grace

It is the eve of the end and of the beginning.

Today has been a roller coaster and my anxiety has had moments of besting me today. I know that within every day we all experience moments of grace, we are not always present of mind to bare witness to them but they are there.

A quiet voice from a long ago past came though to me today and offered grace in such a profound way I can only begin to describe.

Thank you-

Getting the picture of how some one saw you at the time (what a time, it was the years around the cataclysmic shifts that marked my transition from a child to a young woman), I was grateful. Grateful because it has given me a moment of normalicy to interject into the memory of that crazy time. That some one saw me as something other than that poor girl. Granted the view was glaringly harsh, the original memory unforgiving. Thank you- I am glad that in that moment of childhood there was a moment not marked by death or destruction but by a childhood drama playing out in a usual manor.

The grace came from hearing the honesty from this truly wonderful woman, her view now softened by the wisdom of age and hind site. Her heart big and open. Her bravery. Grace in forgiveness. Thank you- for aiding in the connection, my re-rooting.

Was this a divine wisdom at play? This moment that has left me feeling so unsure of what is to come. Being offered a solid interpretation. I believe that I will share the details from todays encounter with my daughter when she is older. If she can have more open sight than I did as a child she will be the better for it.

While this was the moment that shaded everything else today. My day was full of grace moments. Seeing the joy in my daughters' eyes as we shared a joke. Watching my plan come together. Of course the balance to that was watching the schedule shift around, have small road blocks to my plan.

Sigh... tomorrow I will say goodbye to he place where I have made my professional home for over 6 years. It is the right move, it is the smart move, it is the move that brings me one step closer.

Ahh creature of habit- hush up now. There is no turning back, no running with your tail dragging behind you.

the slowness of breath

I am amazed. As I am on the cusp of closing one of the best chapters of my life I find myself giving silent prayers of thanks. Silent messages to the universe. My heart feels whole but at the same time a little heavy. I have a a feeling of overall calm. There is a gentle hand at my back. The fear and anxiety I felt in the previous weeks is disappearing, the fog is clearing. I feel like I am going to emerge one step closer to my truer self.

Do other people have these moments? It feels grand and humbling all at the same time. Do others listen to themselves. Are we meant to look so far inward? To ask? To demand of ourselves the answers that are buried, where we hid the plan that we laid.

What of connection? To touch another- with the hand, with a word, with your heart.

I aspire to live connected. Not through radio waves, digital impulses- the faceless ones. I long to feel rooted, to show my children the value of the heart, of the connection to the people around them. Is this lost? Is it emerging? Are you out there?

To reach this I must slow down, feel the slowness of my breath. In and out, the movement the rhythm, matches that undulation that comes from the earth, that comes from within.

I shout to the sky- I am open- I am ready- I think.........

wow what is going on

I am taking a left turn here. I initially thought I would write the story of my son's adoption. How ever in the last month I have found my self at a cross road. Professionally and personally.

I will continue my initial story but today feel the need to vent on being invisible.

I feel as though I am slowly disappearing. Or is it that I am going through a reinvention of sorts and this particular incarnation is dissolving.

I am leaving the place that I have worked at for almost 7 years and venturing to work from home (YIKES).

I am still working through the past in order to get a line on the future but really needing to be rooted in the present.

The need to feel the solid roots of my friendships has left me feeling a little paranoid and vulnerable. (Why does no one call?) I know that in my drive and prior work schedule I was not a very good friend of family member. Rarely did (do ) I call anyone to chat. I have let some of these roots wither. And now I am not sure what my expectation could / should be.

I have moments of solidly believing that I am moving towards something. These are balanced by the fear of moving away from................

All I really know is that this is going to be an interesting ride.

I had to get out. I knew this deep in my heart. I was not making enough to live on my own but i could not be around my Sister's house any more.

I reached out to my Father. I did not tell him about the child growing inside me. That would have been a deal breaker. There was never any love lost between my father and my sisters (they have no biological connection). I just told him that I did not like living with my sister and wanted to get out. I also know that when you make a deal with the devil, he will exact payment as he sees fit.

He agreed to 'help'

I was still had no inkling what was to come. I called him and told him flat. 'I am pregnant'.

There was a long pause, 'what makes you think it is mine?'

'Because of the timing', another flat reply.

'I am not going to marry you' very matter of fact, resolute.

I was caught by suprise on this one and almost burst out laughing. 'That is not why I am telling you, I don't really want anything. I guess I just wanted you to know. When I figure out what I am going to do I will let you know."

It is strange but that is all I can recall about that conversation, I have no idea what was said after or how the call ended. All I know is feeling more frightened than I had in a long time, in the same instant I would experience these moments of calm, almost a complete knowing that it was all going to turn out ok.

Termination was taken off the table. Ahh this life, this life that is growing inside me. What right did I have to impose my messed up world on to something so pure. I did not deserve such a chance. I was not worthy. I was not ready, I had very little love for myself, how could I possibly care for this life. I would come to discover that the love I could feel for this little creature knows no bounds.

I was living with my sister. I had asked and promised it would be short term. I had to get a job, I had to do chores and I had to give them some money. It was bleak and akward as I could tell I was not entirely welcome. She is nine years older than I. We were once close, when I was little. When my Mother died we all splintered. My two older sisters were just young women and I was just beginning to step towards puberty. There was a retreat, a disconnect that in many ways is obvious today. I wanted so badly to tell some one. I had finally decided to tell her, it was one day, nothing particular happened, I just needed to come clean.

I had come home from work to find the house empty. I was going over the conversation in my head. I wanted them to know I was not asking for anything I just wanted to discus aloud the two options I was facing.

I heard her car, I waited in the kitchen. I had decided to start a casual conversation, beginning with 'How was your day?'

I have great news she said so excitedly. I am pregnant!

I thought I was going to pass out. Somehow my face and voice went on autopilot. A big painful grin spread across my face- oh how exciting I exclaimed. I could not breathe. I could not take this away from her.

We chatted for a few more minutes. Citing that I had an early day and was exhausted (being a truth), I slinked down the stairs and crept into bed. I cried so hard, rage. Silently screaming into the pillow (I did not want to risk them hearing and have to explaining my very dramatic outburst.

The anger, the fear and again it was followed by the calm. It would be ok.

I was on a path of destruction, slow, but walking the path none the less. I had no self respect, or love. I was allowing my self to be pushed along, used, raw. I had become so numb to some degree that pain only registered momentarily.

I took stupid chances, lost time. I kept going back the a constant that gave me nothing but pain. I longed for another man that was never to be mine. I kept hoping for an end, but not one of my doing. Drama is what I wanted and what I created.

One of the lowest points I have ever hit found me in an apartment I could not afford and was about to loose, lying on the floor. I was so tired. It was more than the gothic tired I had been affected with for more than a year. I was sick. It took every ounce I had to crawl to the bathroom to get sick. This is it, I thought, I have contracted something horrible and I am finally dying.

Not that it was complete gloom and doom at this time. There was one. Him. My soulmate. The one I pined for in an Ophelia like way. He was there, I sought refuge with him in bursts, never letting on that I was sick, or telling him that I was homeless. I would go for a warm place to sleep. To have contact, albeit a chaste, with another human. We always shared the same bed. Close, but never sex. It was beyond in many ways. He saw a spark in me. Below the dark, past the stench of my past. He would tell me of the beauty he saw, the worth that I had, the magic I possessed. It was the thought of him that propelled me off of the floor and to the clinic. At least if I was dying I should know from what. We could then plan a fitting gothic end.

I AM WHAT?! That is all I remembered thinking in that instant. I had prepared to be told that I was sick, at worst terminal, at best in need of some serious medical intervention. Instead after peeing in a cup I was told by a very somber and slightly judgmental lady that I was indeed pregnant. My mind raced, this was not part of the script. How far, I was not sure, in the haze I had been living I could not clearly remember at that moment my last period. While my ex had been the most obvious there was still a moment of WHO? and then, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?!

In that instant it began to change. There was panic. Not for me but the life that had fought hard to be inside me. I needed to know how long it had been there. If it was just new I had options but I needed to know.

The ultrasound showed that I was around my 16th week. My options had narrowed.

I called my sister but said nothing. I asked for a place to stay as I was trying to get my life together. I did not tell Him, I just removed myself from his orbit. I needed to tell someone. I wanted to scream. My best friend and I had fallen out almost a year before but hers was the only place I could think of to go. She was not home, but I told her little sister and tols her that if she saw her, to get her to call me.

The next stop was telling the sperm donor. If I could find the shit- it did not take long, as was the pattern, he found me.....

I

I credit that moment, the very creation of my son as a life saving moment for me.

Depression was a mud I was mired in, for longer than I care to admit. I was not working,

living in an apartment I could not afford. I had a hard time to leave the place, I had moved my mattress to the living room after my room mate had left. The only time I would leave was to wander the streets at night. Aimless, hopeless, fading into the shadows. I am still not sure of some of that time, it is a haze. There is one glowing orange spot from that time. Like a coal in a long burning fire. It is the moment that cut through everything.

I had been sick for a while- I could not eat, was exhausted and threw up much of the time.

In my shroud of self loathing I allowed myself to be used for sex by my ex. It was as though if I could trick myself into thinking I was wanted, that I mattered to someone even for a brief moment, life might be worth living. As my 'illness' never got worse or better I had a nagging thought. 'What if? Nah couldn't be, could it? What do I do?'

I have no idea how long I denied the possibility, by the time I got to the doctor to take the test I was told that 16 weeks had past. I remember all the breath leaving my body at that moment. I had not been that scared in a long time. I had not cared for my life, let alone that life fighting to grow with in me. I had waiting just long enough to limit my choices to two. To keep or not to keep, that was the looming question.

Adoption.

I am not adopted, nor have I adopted. I am blessed to be a birth mother. The catalyst, the one who got the ball rolling. It has been almost seventeen years now. So much has changed, I have changed. There have been circumstances in my present life that have made me pause for reflection, admiration and wonder.

My son will be seventeen in the later part of August. No longer a boy, almost a man. I am far from being the girl I was when I decided to give him a better life than I could provide. Yet I still don't feel like a fully mature woman.

I found myself pregnant on the cusp of turning twenty. I was in a dark place I did not see a way out of. I was adrift, no anchor, no means of support, no real hope. I had started my life as the youngest child of a stay at home Mother and a Father who was away much of the time as a pipe fitter. My sisters (there are two) and I are not very close, there is a nine and eleven year gap between us. I have some fond recollections of my life before the age of eight. Playing outside, being with my Mom, my Nana. Going camping with my family. When my Dad was home, becoming the absolute Daddy's girl.

At the age of eight I started to notice the cracks in my families' facade. It took many years for it to completely splinter but the short version is as follows.

I noticed that my Father spent an incredibly large amount of time drinking. If he was really far gone he became very sad and bitter. This mixed with his over dramatic gestures involving guns led to many a fearful night. My Mother had gotten diagnosed with cancer. All though this happened when I was eight I was told she just had a bad back and that little lie carried through until I was eleven and they realized there was no hope for her recovery. She died when I was twelve. I lost my beloved Nana about four months before my Mother went.

I lived with my sister to avoid being stuck in the fostercare system. Kudos to her for giving it a try but a 21 year old being saddled with a 12 year old was probably not such a good idea. I am sure I will go into much more detail as time goes on, but at the moment my son's adoption is forefront in my mind.

I met my son's birthfather when we were both 14. His life and upbringing had it's own set of complications. He was my first boyfriend. My first love. My first poison.

Back and forth over 6 years we alternately loved and loathed each other. We fought, we broke up, we were inseparable, we loved each other.

Unfortunately my son's conception was not during one of the good times. By the time I found myself pregnant with him, we were far into the black time.