Love, Hate, & Indifference

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”  -- Elie Wiesel

 

Upon looking up the actual definition of indifferent, for the purposes of being specific and not applying my own definition, I think the gravity of my thoughts on this quote sunk deeper and hurt more than before.  Merriam-Webster defines indifferent as, "does not matter one way or the other" and, "of no importance or value one way or the other."

I have decided I would rather be hated than have someone feel indifferent about me. Indifference hurts more than hate, to me at least. Indifference means someone has no feeling towards me in either direction. The thought that I would mean so little to someone as to evoke no emotion is way worse than the thought that someone hates me. If they hate me at least I have left some mark on their life, on their soul, as opposed to meaning nothing. If they hate me at least I mean enough to evoke some emotion.

I suppose one of my biggest fears is that my birth parents are indifferent to me. That I mean nothing to them, I evoke no emotion. It would be another great imbalance - I have so many emotions regarding them and to think they have nothing regarding me would be devastating. In fact, I can not imagine it without feeling a searing pain, emotional and physical, to my core. But I personally can't imagine being indifferent about anybody.  Even strangers evoke more than indifference to me. I wonder, am I less than a stranger?

But then maybe indifference is the greatest form of denial.  Pretending that a person or situation is devoid of importance or value, that it evokes nothing, means nothing, distances someone enough to avoid the pain of the situation. The emotions that sting like remorse, helplessness, feeling powerless to control your life or decision, or maybe even being forced into a decision where every outcome is painful can be pushed farther away by forcing a state of indifference. Maybe indifference is the biggest lie we tell ourselves to survive situations in our lives that evoke too much of every emotion to process or handle.

I speak for my birth parents too often - assuming their state of mind, refusing to believe that they could be as cold and distance as they are from my life when I have offered them such a warm loving place to be. It is my own form of denial.  My own hope that rather than indifference they feel,  they feel too much and opt for the illusion of indifference to cope with the presence of pain.  It is my hope anyways.  My fear is indifference.

Sickly

I hate 7up. It was my fate as a child to drink flat 7up whenever I threw up.  I drank a lot of flat 7up. 7up, Orange and Yellow Triamnic, and Robitussin, they were like my 5th food group. A routine punctuated by high fevers, tepid baths, and doctors office visits.

But I got older.  I traded a pediatrician for a rheumatologist.  Triaminc, which no one could ever convince me to take again - even if they paid me, for prednisone, remicade, and a myriad of other medications. In all of it, in all my life the consistency would be, 'me not being healthy' coupled with 'me trying to hide the fact that I'm not healthy'. However, like anything else in life I couldn't hide or run from it forever and this week my bad health, my denial, and reality all collided.

I had to send an email to my siblings this week.  My sister has been pretty aware of my health problems and my tendency to hide them whenever I could but, my brother has not been.  He and I live in the same town, the same town as our aging parents. When their health took a turn for the worse this winter, they suddenly went from aging to aged.  That is when I came to a painful crossroads, I had to tell my brother about my own failing health.  I couldn't help with my parents the way I should and because it's a long term situation I had to come clean with him.

I wrestled with it...  I wrestled with it for weeks.  Hinted, superficially explained hoping that would somehow suffice and that I wouldn't have to come right out and say it but, in the end I knew I had to actually lay it all out on the table.  Seems like a silly concern.  Who would worry about such a ridiculous confession, yet if you didn't know what I was confessing, if you only saw my anxiety about it, you would think I had committed a grievous sin.

Why?  I had to ask myself why I was so afraid of admitting such a silly innocent thing. I know why!

Like many people who are adopted, I am sure that I am not alone in this insatiable need to have to attach a reason to being 'given up'. At least I know it has been that way for me and the very first excuse I ever made for my birth parents was when I was about 6 or 7 years old.  I told myself that they gave me up because somehow they knew I would be sickly and they would not be able to care for me.  My adoptive parents always made it clear that my birth parents wanted the best for me. In this case, their best for me were adoptive parents who would care for me better or maybe care for me when my birth parents didn't want to care for a sickly baby.

Over the years the excuses came and went - when I was 9 a boy in our neighborhood told me that I was put up for adoption because my birth parents thought I was ugly. As I got older it was because they were young and unmarried, because they wanted more for me, because, because, because.  In all of the reasons, noble or not, there was always an underlying element of rejection, a reason to be rejected.  I suppose that as I wrote a long email to my brother and sister explaining 'Ankylosing Spondylitis', explaining how long I have had it, how it has effected my health, how it is effecting me now, my limitations (truly painful to admit and write), and then working up the nerve to press send, that my fear was 'rejection'. This fear has controlled me throughout my life.

The fear that if I am honest about my health problems, I run the risk of being rejected because I am sickly.

However, all of that aside, I pressed send.  I waited for a response. I panicked. It was a day at least. His response was short. I over analyzed it trying to pull more out of the couple sentences that came back in his response. I completely recognized the existence of that fear.  I see now how it has kept me trying to hide my disease and how I 'feel' from most everyone. Knowing that by itself it doesn't really change anything, though it is a start, it is more than not realizing or acknowledging it.

Right now I have a glass next to my bed of nearly flat 7up.  I have been sipping it all day after throwing up all night. I hate flat 7up. I hate being sick. I hate that it scares me and makes me feel vulnerable.

It Isn't...But it Could Be

I read a blog recently that challenged people to address these two ideas put forth in a TV show.  One was it isn't (fill in the blank) but it could be (fill in the blank).  It also suggested addressing the statement, "We decided to...."

It hailed the new TV show as the best thing since popcorn, worth any amount of trouble tracking it down on the net.  I love popcorn so I was all about watching it. In the end, I am still trying to watch it and not succeeding.  Regardless, I feel completely capable of addressing these two profound and largely rhetorical questions.  In fact, since I read the blog I haven't been able to think of much else and though I am sure these questions could apply to many aspect of life, politics, and industry my mind naturally gravitated to my adoption and my relationship with my birth parents.

It isn't...but it could be...

Right now, today, from where I sit, it isn't anything. Well, nothing in the sense that I have no contact with my birth family.  I am pretty sure that all my half siblings, the children of my birth parents, have no clue I exist.  My birth father, though I had a brief email exchange with him, cut that off years ago and has made no effort to have any relationship.  He made it clear he wasn't interested in one in the future.  Despite my occasional olive branch no doves have returned to the ship.

My birth mother was kind enough to send me health information some years ago.  I have serious health problems but apparently their family is somewhat of a genetic phenomenon and there is no history or any health problems in her gene pool.  She didn't even sign the letter.  Maybe she thought not signing it would give her plausible deniability.  I meant to write her back and thank her for at least giving me that much; but, I never did and somehow it seems that 6-8 years later really is too late. 

The living breathing skeleton in the closet.  I seem to be the deep dark secret, hidden.   I suppose that from my birth parents perspective they would like their "it isn't" and their "could be" to line up.  It isn't anything and if we work it right it could be nothing.

Who knew that nothing could weigh so much.  At least to me this nothing seems like a terrible burden that I carry.  Somehow I went from being their secret to being the keeper of their secret.  To me it's the definition of self-denial,  of unresolved, of unrequited.  It's too many decisions that affect too many peoples lives.  It's me somehow being responsible for the situation. Responsible for whatever goes wrong if I alter the current terms and conditions.  Responsible for everyone's feelings and needs.  Responsible for keeping the secret, helping to make their it could be nothing come true.  When really my but it could be is something, I wish it could be something.  

It isn't anything today but it could be something.

In my naive, hopeful heart it could be something simple, loving, wonderful, and freeing. 

I don't expect to be invited to Thanksgiving Dinner,  to the big events in life, or written into the will.  I suppose I just want to be out of the shadow and the loneliness of the closet.  To not have my existence denied or hidden as if I was something to be ashamed or embarrassed by. 

We have decided...

Of course, how can you consider what it is and what you want it to be without putting some time into what to do about it.  Thus we enter my land, the land of endless what ifs, of over consideration, the land of indecision.  I have homesteaded here, built my mansion, stocked the pantry, laid up a two years supply, and seem to have no plans on leaving.

People, friends and family, push me to make contact. "Send them a letter, call them, just drive down and show up on their doorstep.   I'll take you, road trip,"  they say.  "Bypass your birth parents, they had their chance.  Contact their children. You have rights too,"  they argue, "I'll do it for you, I'll email, I'll write, I'll call."  I have good friends and family.  They see my desire, my hurt, they jump to my defense.  They are concerned that I am so careful of people who have shown no care for me.

They are impatient with my indecision.

Really, I think I am more paralyzed in the face of decision.  So many variables, so many possible outcomes.  The fear of picking the wrong one is overwhelming.  The fear of not being enough, of being wrong, of being rejected.  Go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.  I am not sure that I win in any scenario.  So, my attitude has been why play the game?

Maybe it's my age or that fact that I have carried this burden for so long but recently I have grown weary of the landscape of my indecision.  Maybe even weary enough to actually act.

I did consider contacting one of my half siblings recently but in the end I didn't, I couldn't.  He was on top of the world in his life, his career, his relationships.  As I thought about it, and I thought about it more than I ever have, I couldn't bare to rip the wind from his sails.  I couldn't turn his world upside down for my own satisfaction.  What a good big sister I am to a stranger and a terrible friend to myself.  I retreated back into the shadow of my closet.  Packed it all away for another time, a different day, a better day for that kind of news.

Today, it isn't anything but it could be something someday when I decide for it to be.

Happy Birthday to Me

It was my birthday on Sunday - Happy Birthday to me.  And it was wonderful, a great day with my husband and children.  I felt very honored and loved.  But birthdays always have this bittersweet edge for me.  My sister calls. My brother puts up long lost photos of 5 year old me celebrating a birthday at Storyland.  My parents serenade me with a duet of Happy Birthday over the phone.  And still there is always, in the back of my mind, an ominous absence.

Unmistakably, the first people I knew - the people who made me - are missing from the equation of my day.   That has been the case pretty much all my life with maybe the exception of the year I was in contact with my birth father by email.  I am sure there was some exchange there on my birthday that year.

I wonder every year if they remember me on that day the way I remember them.  I don't think my birth father could forget the day.  He has two natural children whose birthdays both fall within days of mine.  And while I have never really had contact with my birth mother I would think the trauma alone of birth and adoption would sear the date into your psyche permanently.  

The real question then is what do they think about on that day?  Do they wonder where I am?  If I am okay?  If I am happy?  Do they wish they could pick up a phone and find out the way I wish I could?  Maybe they feel as trapped in this strange set of circumstances as I do.  Dancing around boundaries that I don't understand.  Boundaries created by circumstances I had no control or say so in.  Maybe they feel the same.  Maybe they feel, as I do, that the boundaries were set by the circumstances and they have no control either.

I sit wishing I knew how to change them or get around them or break through them.  Hoping that if I do someday figure it out that I will be pleasantly surprised by what lives on the other side, not hurt and horrified and regretful that I pushed my way through.


I read somewhere tonight a persons proclamation on the internet that they loved the fear of the unknown and the excitement it created.  I have never felt that.  Maybe I love the hope of the unknown but I find the fear of the unknown paralyzing, not exciting.  It certainly has paralyzed me where my birth parents are concerned.  Can't you see it, year after year, birthday after birthday I let the boundaries as defined by them sit undisturbed.  Willing to be satisfied with the hope of the unknown, not wanting to replace it with the reality of whatever would happen if I were to change it.

Fear wins, it controls me, at least this year it does.

The Phone Call I Didn't Make

I was laying in bed - trying to take my Sunday afternoon nap when my thoughts started buzzing.  I hate that really,  why can't they buzz when I'm not trying to sleep.  I had been doted on by my children and husband - I had just gotten off the phone from wishing my mother a Happy Mother's Day and my mind went almost immediately to the phone call I didn't make this Mother's Day - the one I have never made on Mother's Day.

The truly interesting thing is I have never even thought about calling my birth mother on this day to honor mothers until today.  Never even crossed my mind.  Maybe because it seemed like such an impossible risk to take that I couldn't even address it.  I have changed a lot in the last year.  I used to think only about what my birth parents wanted.  Respecting their privacy, their secrets.  I used to hide from my own fears behind my respect for their privacy. I used to say that I didn't want to risk messing up the potential for a relationship by pushing them.  Then I realized that either way - I had no relationship with them.  Either way I got nothing.  I was protecting nothing.

So, I started to think about how I might contact these people - my mysterious birth parents, their mysterious family.  What I might be willing to risk.  Thinking about what I wanted and not just what they wanted.  Lots of thinking and truthfully no action.  I have yet to do anything about it, with exception of starting this blog, which they don't know exists.

To be honest, I scared myself today when I thought - I should just call her and wish her a happy Mother's Day.  I mused about how that phone call might go.  I would ask to speak with her.  I would say Happy Mother's Day.  I am sure at some point - who is this would be asked.  I would answer Lisa, but would she know that's my name?  I sent her a letter once, would she remember my name from that?  Awkward.  Would I need to use my original birth name.  My name is Lisa, you might know me better as Danielle.  It's been almost 45 years, and I don't know her at all - maybe she wouldn't recognize either name.  Awkward.

I am sure that one reason I avoid contact with them - even though I want it so badly - is I just wouldn't know what to say.  There is such deep water there with such a strong and unrelenting undertow.  Would I say too much and scare them off - would I say to little and would they think that I don't care?  Too needy, not needy enough?  Too invasive, too aloof?  Regardless, my mind always goes to me doing something wrong, unacceptable, unforgivable.  Me doing something that gives them a reason to be distant.  I have found it paralyzing.

Needless to say I didn't call.  But I suppose considering it was progress. 

The Old Gray Filing Cabinet

I remember as a child and teen the ominous hold the gray filing cabinet in my parent's bedroom held over me.  I knew what was in it for the most part, the yearly "happenings" folders that my mother collected cards, news clippings, school programs, and letters in for safe keeping.  There was folders for appliance manuals, bills, and maps.  And somewhere in the old 2 drawer filing cabinet was a folder that held information my parents had received about my birth parents. 

It was never a secret that I was adopted.  I can't remember a time that I didn't know that I was adopted; but, my birth parents were definitely a mystery.  They were a mystery I couldn't help toss over an over in my mind.  It was a mystery that would pull me down the long 80 foot hall in our family home and leave me, heart pounding, kneeling in front of that gray filing cabinet, working up the nerve to open it, and search for those little known facts about my origins.

I think this long trek started when I was about 12 years old.  I don't think I worked up the nerve to open the drawer and look until I was about 15 or 16 years old.    Sometimes, I would panic that I would get caught red handed, so I'd leave the room with a cover story in place - just in case someone met me in the hall.  Secrets end in lies.  Sometimes, I would open the drawer and start to look, then feel guilty for searching for the sacred document without permission, close it, and run.  The guilt would linger, still lingers. I suppose some part of me feels that loving both sets of parents will always be betrayal of one or the other.  Most of the time I would chicken out, not knowing what I would find made knowing and not knowing equally scary.  The end result of all my forays down to the long hall to the gray filing cabinet was running in some form or another.

Eventually, I worked up the nerve, heart pounding, barely breathing, I opened the cabinet, and found the folder.  It was almost nothing.  Certainly not earth shattering enough to have held me captive all those years.  It was pretty much everything my parents had already told me.  It was everything they knew.  Non-identifying information:  my birth parents were both 20, he had dark hair and dark eyes and was Russian Jew.  She was blond with blue eyes, German, English, Irish.  I was born in Los Angeles.  Typed out on a thin piece of typing paper, in its entirety, it maybe covered an eighth of the page.  I slipped it back in the folder, back into the gray filing cabinet, and closed the drawer.  


After that, the gray filing cabinet became more of a personal metaphor for all the mysteries in my life surrounding adoption.  I had to travel down a scarier hall, the one in my mind and heart, the one that held all the things I didn't know, all the excuses I gave for the necessity of my adoption, all the bad memories of people's ignorance, all the real world road blocks that would pop up every time I tried to find out anything real about my past.  It held everything I would safeguard with think walls of personal space to keep the very vulnerable me safe.  Just like that old gray filing cabinet down the hall it would take a lot of nerve to peak inside and see what was hidden in there, more nerve than I had until recently.

I suppose I was hoping that it would be like that anticlimactic old piece of typing paper, not nearly as scary or revealing as I though it would be.  So far, that hasn't been the case.  I have found that this filing cabinet holds much more than I thought.  It seems to be filled with experiences, thoughts, and feelings that were carefully crammed away waiting for a day when I could gather the nerve to open them up and deal with them.  They run deeper than I expected.  The kind of deep where emotion a creates physical reaction in your gut, where tears are an involuntary response.  It is okay though, because it is better to feel it and deal with it than let it sit, building a thicker and thicker wall of protection.  It is a necessary pain.

I believe I am a secret that my birth parents have barricaded behind thick walls of their own to keep them and the ones they love safe.  Pretty soon the walls end up in charge and the secret has too much control.  I was headed that way,  my secret pain, my walls were starting to block everything out to keep me safe.  This is hard, it is not what I want; but' I won't have the secrets make my heart pound in fear, make me paralyzed into inaction anymore.  I will take the long walk, open the cabinet, and face it.

No more secret folders, in dark filing cabinets, behind thick walls.

Before I Was a Mother

After trying to explain to my daughter that I was not mad at her over and over again I blurted out, “Believe it or not, before I was a mother I was a person.  That means that I have my own issues. I have good days and bad days.  It also means that I can be in a bad mood and it can have nothing to do with you.”

My daughter is an adult but I venture to say from the look on her face that this was a novel concept.  It’s probably my own fault that she thinks that if I’m mad it must be at her or her siblings.  I’ve rarely shared my own struggles.  I’m beyond a private person. I haven’t shared openly with my children, not even with my closest friends.  On rare occasions I have shared them with my husband.   I worry that I haven’t trusted others enough to let them that far into the castle walls.  More likely than not it has been my inability to trust myself that has kept me guarding my own traumas, fears, and failures so fiercely.

Consequently, I have spent years boxing up that which was painful, packing, and shoving it as far away from me as humanly possible.  It hasn’t been a terribly hard thing to do.  I am raising 7 children.  My husband and 6 of those children have ADHD and a list of co-occurring conditions a mile long.  I race from emergency to emergency – dealing with schools and IEPs, working with children to overcome dyslexia, handling an OCD, ODD or anxiety/depression moment (just to mention a few).  I home school two of my children still, I used to home school all of them.  I am active in my church and probably more important my children are active in church which makes me a taxi driver darting between schools, church, and home.  The amount we pay in medical expenses allows us to itemize on our taxes even though we don’t own a home.  Add the doctor’s office to the taxi route.

I have plenty to keep me occupied, plenty to keep me away from dealing with the issues I collected while I was a person, before I was a mother. 

But problems, traumas, fears, failures; they don’t wait forever.  They don’t stay neatly boxed up and packed away.  They find their way to the surface and eventually demand attention.  My day of reckoning came recently.  Now I’m trying to deal with all of it and still do all the things I do as a mother and wife in high demand.  It has made me a little cranky – in part because I really don’t want to go down this road, I really don’t want a road to go down.  I really don’t want to face the pain and other hard emotions; that is, after all, why I’ve been avoiding them for so long.

This blog is to help me accomplish that.  It’s to give me a safe place where I have control and I can have a voice in issues that I haven’t had control or a voice in all my life.  It is me reclaiming my ability to be more than just a mother, to be a person, a friend, a wife, a daughter, a sister, and a mother.