Biological Parents and Blonde Babies

You start wondering about your birth mother, whether she'd even care or not that she has two grand children. You wonder if they have any of her features. You wonder if you do too. No one in your family has an insatiable need to write or a knack for music. You've always wanted to know where you get your quirks from – like your sense of humor and flair for all things dramatic, or your freakishly large feet and freakishly small ears…. Little things that most people take for granted because all they have to do is look at the people sitting at the dinner table. It seems silly. But to you it’s important.

You've just always wanted to feel like you belong - something you've never felt in your adopted family or anywhere you’ve ever been.

You start to cry fearing that you'll never meet her. Your adopted mom told you it was a closed adoption and that she’s sorry, but there’s just no way to find out who your mother was. This has left you bewildered since you were a little girl, but you tried to just forget about it and move on with life. It’s not like the parents you were given were all that bad.

Then you start to suspect that your mother isn’t exactly being truthful about finding your birth mother. After your first son was born, your father told you that your Birth Mother tried to contact you when you were 16, but your biological mom "didn't think it was a good idea."  A few years later he asks you why you never went to Maine to pick up the letter that your Birth Mother had written to you. You told him that you had no idea she had. He said, “I could’ve sworn your mother told you. I must have been confused.” He’s never confused. You didn't speak to her for weeks after you found about this. She claims it was in your best interest, but you know damned better. She's somehow threatened, and you suppose you can understand to a certain extent. But you feel like it is your inalienable right to know where you came from and you don’t know how much forgiveness you can muster for anyone who interferes with this.

For now, you’ll just sit and take care of your babies, and brush their blonde hair, wondering how in the world you, an interracial, brown eyes brunette, managed to have two blue eyed blonde babies with a couple of other brunettes.

Your next step is to try and find some way to get your original birth certificate from Maine. All you know is that when you were born your name was Naiomi, your mother was a college student at the University of Farmington and your father was apparently MIA.

You aren’t trying to replace anyone. Your parents are your parents and nothing can change that.

You just want to know where you came from. Doesn’t everybody?

 

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Birth, Forgiveness and the 1000 Mile Void

You seethe and cry and scream until you have nothing left in you and come to the realization that you're a 27 year old divorced mother of two, and both from different fathers, who lives at home and doesn't have much going for her so you figure you better make it work with this one. You're not getting any younger and the emotional baggage just keeps piling up.
You rub your enormous belly, and your little boy kicks your hand in response. While you watch him dance and wiggle you decide that you'll ignore how much he's hurt and betrayed you. You'll ignore the fact that you feel like he doesn't deserve you and that you don't deserve to be with yet another man who you just can't trust. You'll just distance yourself as much as you can emotionally from him without completely dissolving the relationship until you think he seems like he's worthy of being trusted. You still haven't reached that point yet. And the void between you feels like 1000 oceans.
Before you know it, you're in labor, huffing and puffing through each contraction wondering when this little guy will just get here already. Your love, your light, your bliss stays with you the whole time, excitedly writing down the exact timing of every contraction. After 12 hours they're still no more frequent than every seven minutes apart and you start to wonder if you’ll be in labor for the rest of your life. Your Love, your Light, your Bliss, is turning in for the night, seemingly disappointed. You are too.
Another 12 hours later and your contractions are  kicking it into high gear, coming at least once every five minutes and stronger. You think it might be a good idea to go to the hospital, especially since you’re now screaming through them. You get to the hospital and the intervals go down, but the intensity remains the same. They tell you that you’re only 3 centimeters dilated and that you may stay like this for a few days so it would be best to leave and return when you’re sure you’re in labor. You mumble  a rather audible “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” and then you almost start crying. If you stay like for DAYS SOMEONE’S gonna get shot – you think. Your Light, your Love, your Bliss seems a little bewildered too, but he tries to stay positive because he knows you’re getting tired and just want this little one to be born already. The nurse suggests you go for a long walk and you glare at her through slitted eyes. You leave, get a gluten free pizza, screaming at your Light, your Love, your Bliss anytime he drives over a pothole that you don’t like. You finally get home and grunt and groan some more, scaring your little son who keeps trying to comfort you, but he’s still too little to understand that mommy’s ok and that this is just part of having a baby. His fear makes you think that maybe you should go back to the hospital. God know it hurts more than it did when you left and if they tell you to leave this time, you’ll tell them EXACTLY where they can go.
You head up to maternity ward and they ask you to sit in the waiting room. You’re grunting and groaning and the other people there- probably waiting for the birth of their little nieces, nephews and grandbabies- are trying politely not to stare as you moan and groan as demurely as a lady can when she’s in labor. A nurse walks by and asks if you are alright. You just stare at her blankly and she rushes away to the desk. A few minutes later they come out to get you and the nurse you spoke to at the front desk says, “I had no idea! You weren’t complaining enough!” She also gets a blank stare. They take you to your room and find that you’re 6 centimeters dilated and baby is definitely on his way. The contractions are happening about every 2 minutes apart and you are moaning like you’ve never moaned before. You’d had an epidural way before this point when you went into labor with your first.
The nurse offers you Nubian to help with the pain until you can have an epidural (sorry – childbirth au-natural is not for me) and you happily agree. The Nubian hits you and the contractions become manageable and you’re actually able to smile for the first time since that morning. Then it either starts to wear off or the contractions are becoming stronger. You can’t tell the difference. All you know is it HURTS. Finally, 31 hours into labor, the anesthesiologist places your catheter (though he did miss the first time and had to stab you twice in the spine which is no pleasure cruise, but in the middle of labor it just feels like a searing unrelenting pinch so that’s one twisted plus to all of that pain) and you are completely numb, cool, calm and collected within 15 minutes. Your Love, your Light, your Bliss holds your hand and rubs your back and seems excited. He’s sitting next to you while you’re trying to sleep and all of sudden you hear a loud BOOM on the Doppler and feel what feels like the biggest kick that this baby has ever kicked. The nurse lifts your blanket and announces that you’re water has broken. She calls in the doctor and after they have you flip around a few times you are ready to push. You tuck your chin to your chest, grab on behind your knees and push with everything you have when the doctor says push and stop when she says stop. Three pushes and he’s out, wailing his beautiful little blonde head off. Any hint of resentment is completely irradiated and is over taken by an all encompassing love and amazement at just how ridiculously cute he is.
The doctor places him on your chest and you just shower him in kisses,- his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his hands – every inch of him is exquisite even with all the newborn gunk still stuck to his hair and skin. Your Love, your Light, your Bliss stands next to you and he has never seemed so over joyed. He almost appears humbled. Like in a single instant he went from a lost boy to a man with a purpose and a destiny. In that moment he is the single most beautiful man you’ve ever met and you just don’t want to meet another. And in that single instant, nothing would ever be the same between you again and  the 1000 ocean void vanished.

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Betrayal and Transitions

Your baby, and belly are growing and the pain that used to wrack your bones is lessening every day. Every bout of morning sickness, every hesitant sip of caffeinated beverages, and the swelling in your breasts reminds you constantly that you’re pregnant. Your Love, your Light, your Bliss seems to forget. It’s tough for him at first, he seems almost UPSET that you might actually live. You were supposed to be gone in a few months, he says. He hadn’t planned for any of this, he says. He’s sad that you won’t get an abortion, but you’ve never been one to believe in killing off family members just because it might seem to be more convenient at the time. You have a son who is four and can’t see how his life is any more real or worthy of continuing than the little life that’s blooming inside of you.

He flies clear across the country to clear his head where he ignores you for a week.  He comes back and says he thinks he can do it- he wants to try to be together. You ask him if he slept with anyone else when he was gone and he says no. You don’t even take time to process this and feel like you want to slap him for leaving and ignoring you during one of the most vulnerable and confusing times you’ve ever experienced. But he has that x-factor that you’ve never found in anyone else and because of that you look past it and try to move forward. Or maybe you really just have horrible self esteem and think, “well hey- at least he doesn’t hit me!”

The time comes for your first ultrasound and he goes with you, seemingly apathetic. You see the little coffee bean flickering on the screen and feel the beginnings of a burst of excitement, until you turn to see the blank, thoughtless expression on his face. He doesn’t care at all, you think. He feels no attachment. You feel crushed, but don’t say anything. At this point he still holds the belief that the baby is just a bundle of cells. He won’t even refer to the baby as a baby. Just a little blob.

He’s still getting drunk three times a week and getting high every day. The people he surrounds himself with are worse and about six years younger than he is,  always surrounded by ridiculous high-school style drama because they all keep sleeping with each other and lying about it, and getting fucked up on a regular basis. You even try to hang out with these few people a few times, but aside for a few of them, you just can’t deal with the slew of drunken idiots or the irritating little fat Trolll that loves to drag her pudgy, sweaty fingers all over your belly and talk about just how pretty you are and laying it on way way way to thick. This is all some pathetic attempt to convince you that she doesn’t want your boyfriend. But you know better.

But he doesn’t know that all of these so called “friends”, especially the Troll, love to tell you and each other that he’s a loser who needs to grow up and that his drinking makes him pathetic. His friends. You can’t repeat that to him, because that would hurt his feelings but every time he chooses them over you you want to scream and tell him everything they’ve said. You don’t. You still haven’t. and you won’t.

He says he needs time to gradually stop drinking and smoking and to you this sounds like the sentiments of an idiotic high school boy, not a 26 year old grown man with a baby on the way. He can’t seem to understand why after being married to a raging alcoholic, and living with a pothead whose only motivation was getting more pot, your skeptical that he can change and extremely wary of even considering a relationship with someone who appears to have hit age 18 and stopped evolving.

Time passes and your belly grows even bigger, and your health has never been better. He seems to be growing an attachment to the little boy inside of you, he’s drinking less and you hope that this means he’s finally on the road to responsible parenthood. Things get better. He seems sweeter to you, like he might actually really love you, but you just can’t shake this feeling in the pit of your stomach like something isn’t right, and you randomly start massive fights with him, accusing him of cheating, and every possible way you ask he insists he never has. The issue gets dropped, comes up again, gets dropped and comes up again.

A few months pass and things seem to be going well. Better than they ever have you think. You’re waddling around everywhere, peeing every 15 minutes, and sleeping like a log. He’s  handling all of your ridiculous demands for lobster and chocolate like a pro, without even complaining.

Then one idle Tuesday you have this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach and you just know that he did something. Your face grows red and your hands are shaking so you know that this is an instinct that you can’t ignore. You confront him and sure enough, when he was in Washington he cheated on you with his psychotic whore of an ex girlfriend. He claims it was because he needed closure and apparently closure can’t be had without fucking around. He tries to convince you that you two weren’t even together then and you are so enraged and hurt that you puke. He seems like he doesn’t care less about what he did, he’s just sorry that you found out. He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings, he says. You know that he didn’t tell you because he’s a pussy. He knows you would’ve left as soon as he told you. What bothers you the most, is that you specifically asked him if he did anything when he was gone and he lied and said no. He lied. And now he’s trying to convince you that you weren’t even together when he did. He is no better than any other self serving, womanizing asshole that you’ve had the pleasure of meeting. And now you have the pleasure of giving this asshole, the same asshole who was so upset that you weren’t dying anymore, the greatest gift imaginable – a gift he doesn’t deserve- a beautiful baby. And you start to resent this baby because he will keep you tied to this asshole who hasn’t ever really cared about you and probably never will.

 

Technorati Tags: love,cheating,betrayal,relationships,pregnancy,baby,lying

A Blue Eyed Boy and a Brown Eyed Girl

So ladies, lets say you meet this guy and he’s literally the single most exquisite man you’ve ever met – smells amazing even when he sweats, says all the right things, does all the right things, lights up your whole body with just his kiss, gives you that wobbly-kneed-oh-I-just-might-puke-with-giddy-girly-joy feeling when just  looks at you, makes you feel like you’ve been a complete idiot for ever thinking you had any clue of what love was until you met him and that’s when you realize that he’s the single sexiest man you’ve ever known. Then lets say that Prince Charming decides one day that you love him too much and tells you to bounce. You watch him proverbially punch straight through your chest and rip your heart out as you stand there trying to catch your breath and just understand what the fuck just happened so you do what any other 25 year old divorcé with a baby who lives with her psychotic parents and has no real direction at all in life would do: you go on a complete bender and spend the weekend in a purple haze of sticky smoke and wash it all away with a few bottles of Bombay Sapphire. You keep calling your friend, who shall be referred to as The Troll to avoid any connection with this particular human being and any concept of decent human behavior, who had always said that if you ever needed anything to just give her a call but for some reason she just never answers the phone or calls back. Because she’s his friend too, and well doesn’t he need friends. For a second there’s a flash in your subconscious and you know exactly what's happening, but that lovely, self preserving little super ego files it away somewhere between what you ate for breakfast on January 3, 1998 and the recipe for english-muffin pizzas.

He completely stops talking to you. Like he just vanished off of the planet and like you meant absolutely nothing to him at all. So after weeks of being ignored you finally send him an email telling him how much he devastated you and how cruel he is being and that you wish you never met him because, quite frankly, it just wasn’t worth the pain. Surprise, surprise, he responds. He hates that he hurt you (you don’t quite take that at face value) and promises he’ll see you when he gets back into the country. (You don’t quite believe that one either.) and little do you know he’s been receiving nasty pictures from that blubberous disease ridden whore of a friend, The Troll, who made it a point to fuck him that very same night that he broke your heart and told you to leave. Coincidence seems doubtful…… very doubtful, But you don’t know this yet and you just wait, un optimistically for his return, just hoping to see his face.

He comes back home and when you see him standing in your doorway, he looks so good that it almost hurts. It takes every inch ounce of willpower that you have not to plant a kiss on his sensual, full, bowed lips. Your heart still does that little flutter only now it’s followed with a sort of sadness because he’s not your Sugar anymore. He’s not even really a friend. He’s just a guy, standing at your doorstep, with intentions that you are too hurt, tired and emotional to see. You think it almost looks like he has the same spark in his eye that he used to but just chalk it up to wishful thinking and brush it aside. He comes inside and lays down with you on your bed and rambles on and on about his trip and you don’t here a single word. Just the warmness of his prescence, his scent that will linger on your pillow, the crinkling of the lines of his face when he smiles, the light in his blue eyes when he talks about something that excites him- everything that you longed for is laying right next to you and for the moment, that is enough and all you needed. And everyone of these sentiments that you are relishing and memorizing lest this be the last time you see him are like so many daggers to your heart. As melodramatic as that sounds, that’s exactly how it feels. You fall asleep to the sound of his voice, nuzzled as close to him as you can be without actually touching him. You wake up because he’s cuddled up to you, the muscles of his chest pressing against your back and his strong arm encircling your waist, and his soft full lips kissing the back of your neck. You roll over and your lips seem to melt into his and you both fall asleep, face to face.

He comes over again the next day, apologizing because he knows what that must have meant to you, but sometimes he gets lonely too and it just felt good to be close someone who cares about him and doesn’t judge him. You can’t help but feel relief since he obviously has feelings for you, no matter how much it screws up his head to acknowledge them. That night he kisses you again. And again. And again until your bodies are interlocked, doing what they know how to do best. Days pass and both of you are right back where you were. And you start to think this could actually be something to last.

Meanwhile, you are unaware that The Troll is enraged every time she finds out that he’s been with you and starts lying to him and to you in a concerted effort to keep you two apart and keep him by her side, despite his blatant disinterest. You start to get suspicious and another friend of yours finally tells you that they slept together right after he told you to bounce. You confront The Troll. She tells you how he was drunk beyond the point of comprehension the night he broke up with you and she fucked him. She says he begged her too. She says she only did it out of pity, and that’s why she stopped talking to you that very same day. Pity….likely story… she never has and never will do better… Moving on….You confront him. He says he hoped you wouldn’t find out. And it doesn’t matter anyway because she doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. You are furious and after a barrage of abusive interludes with her she finally shuts up and disappears. But they are still friends. This bothers you, but you’re not exactly in any position to say anything and you continue along with your Love, your Light, your Bliss and try to leave the past in the past.

Then you find out your pregnant. But something in you tells you this baby just wasn’t meant to be and won’t be. He doesn’t believe you, even after seeing the positive pregnancy test, and it breaks your heart to know that he actually thinks you would make something up like that.You somehow just know that this baby won’t see a day in the world and he can’t seem to wrap his brain around that concept. Eventually, you start to bleed so he wants you to go to the hospital and you don’t see the need for it: women miscarry every day and its rarely ever a medical emergency. He thinks this means you must be lying and leaves so you miscarry alone. You call the hospital to appease him and they say the same thing you thought; stay home unless you start bleeding profusely. He still doesn’t believe you. The vice on your heart tightens just a little more. Meanwhile he’s telling The Troll about what’s been going on and she’s been assuring him that you’re not only lying, but that you’re bat-shit crazy to boot. You can picture pudgy little face squinted in a little sneer that only a troll can sneer as she waits for him to finally tell you that you’re crazy and go running back into her stubby little arms.

But that doesn’t happen. You stopped talking to him for a while after that and eventually he comes back around and apologizes and you apologize too because let’s face it- you weren’t exactly behaving like a sane person and maybe after a little time passed you understood his disbelief. He says he knows he should’ve been there, but the way you were acting made it seem like it had to be a lie. You explain that you’re not one to question instincts and voilà you were dead on with this one. He starts coming around again. The troll slithers back into her cave, her childish plans yet again foiled by reality and people who just know better.

He starts to be sweet to you again, though you’re both a little warier. You’re starting to think he might actually love you too.

Then, you start to get sick and the prognosis was unspeakably grim. You don’t say a word to anyone about it, because quite frankly, you don’t even know if you’ve processed the whole notion that 13 was mid-life for you. And you don’t want to be the girl who people smile at a little too sweetly and whisper ‘oh isn’t it so sad’ when you walk away. You want things to be just the way they are and you’ll find a way to cope on your own. The GI doctor and oncologist both said the same thing: weeks, maybe months, but it was time to start checking things off the bucket list and get your affairs in order. It was so devastating that you didn’t even understand the words that they said to you until the next day. And then a rage set in followed by a determination to just try something and you settled on a Healer.

You start seeing a healer who you name “The Witch Doctor” and he explains to you how all sickness is the result of an imbalance in the energy that you are surrounded by most. He says only people who can embrace and believe this concept can be healed by him and that once they master this fundamental belief they need not worry about cancer, aids, diabetes and any other illness that plagues man-kind. You try your hardest to believe everything he’s saying because even if it’s all bullshit, placebo can be a very powerful thing. He gives you herbs to crush and steep, mix into poultices and mix with whatever meals you can manage to keep down  and you see him every week on your lunch break. He chants and waves his hands over rocks which he has aligned just-so on your back, and neck and then your stomach, feet, hands and throat when you turn over. He seems giddy after each visit. “Yes! Yes you believe! It works much for you!” You feel almost hopeful after each visit, that is, until you take a swig of Gatorade and feel your insides burning and retching from your esophagus all the way down to your rectum. The same feeling that brought you to the regular doctor in the first place.

One day you return to The Witch Doctor and he seems to be glowing with excitement. Flitting about his tiny office. “You’re done! I heal you!” he says. You stare at him in disbelief and tell him you just threw up water this morning. He scoffs and tells you its finished. You’ll be very very sick for a while but it means that its working and all of the cancer and bad energy will find its way out of your system. You leave, utterly disappointed and feeling like you completely wasted your time. You cry and cry because that was the only option you had and it left you right where you started, only a little more well versed in herbs and teas.

In your dismay you tell your Love, your Light, your Bliss and he tells you he’s so sorry. He finally tells you that he loves you, though by now its fairly obvious. He tries his best to support and console you but it’s obvious that he struggle to find the right words to say or know the right things to do. But he tries and he stays by your side every night, holding you when you feel like your insides are on fire, kissing you when you cry, listening to you when you whine and scream about the pain and what this will do to your little son. Day in, day out. He doesn’t say much, but what is there to say? Comfort. Warmth. That’s all that you need right now.

One Friday, you go to the hospital with severe stomach pain, par for the course,  and they ask if you could possibly be pregnant since they want to do a CAT scan. You laugh at the notion since you’ve been rendered infertile by every doctor you’ve encountered since your diagnosis. You tell this to the ER nurse and he says they have to take a urine anyway. It’s hospital protocol in women of childbearing age. After the nurse gave you a shot of Dilaudid for the pain, you lay in bed waiting to be wheeled to X-ray. An hour passes and another nurse asks for another urine sample. You think nothing of it- Dilaudid will do that to you- and thoughtlessly provide another sample. And then another hour passes. And then another. A doctor walks in and you ask when you’ll be having that Cat Scan and he tells you that the hcg level in your urine was 5 and generally anything 5 and over is considered to be pregnant, though it could just be a fluctuation in your cycle. He said to go home and take a pregnancy test in a week and if you are still in pain you should come back. The hospital just won’t do a cat-scan. You still thought nothing of it. You just assumed it was part of the process of a body breaking down, or whatever exotic little tinctures you’d been consuming from the Witch Doctor. That Saturday you and your Love, your Light, your Bliss go out for the night with some of his friends. You drink much too much, he drinks just a little too much, and you head back to your house. You sit outside in the car for a little while, talking about what he wants to do in his future. You shed a few tears and wipe them away before he notices. He says he thinks having a baby will be the single greatest moment in his life, and this time he sees the tears in your eyes that you fight not to show and you internally seethe because you’ll never be around to see or be apart of any of this.  He kisses your forehead and pulls you close. His kisses feel heavy and woeful.

A week later, on April 15th, you saunter into Rite Aid and bought a pregnancy test, went back to work and took it in the bathroom at work. You watch apathetically as the test line grows a funky reddish-magenta and watch with an increasing panic, fear, and utter confusion as the second line also grows a funky reddish-magenta. You promptly take the other test in the box and it tells you the same story: Pregnant!You go back to rite aid and buy four more boxes of pregnancy tests and take six of them. Every single one of them tells you the same story: Pregnant! You put the inevitable freak-out on hold and go about your work day- you can’t afford to be unproductive just because of a little positive pregnancy test. Still in your mind all day you’re contemplating: You know you can’t have an abortion – a human is a human regardless of what state it is in or who it depends on,  but you know that after what happened the last time and with you now being supposedly infertile on multiple fronts, your Love, your Light, your Bliss just isn’t going to believe you and he’s going to think that you lied about being sick. There is absolutely no medically sound reason for this to have happened. Yet here you are, with a baby growing in your belly.

You visit the Witch Doctor. He lays his hands on your chest and sweeps them over your body. He says that you are good, stronger than ever, and this is the blessing that karma has chosen for you. He says that this is my Holy Day and I should celebrate. You scream at him, forlorn and weary and at a loss for what the hell you’re supposed to do next. You tell him that he ruined your life and he pauses, looking almost hurt, and then tells you that a ruined life is better than no life. You leave, sobbing, not able to comprehend that complete and utter bullshit that you just heard, even though you know you can’t really call it bullshit if he’s been right all along, which he obvious has.

You spend the rest of the day thinking up the best way possible to tell  your Love, your Light, your Bliss that for some insane reason you are carrying his child. You think to yourself about the medical community in general and wonder if they ever had it right about you. Maybe you weren’t as sick as they assumed. But then again, maybe the Witch Doctor really was magic. You don’t know, and you partly don’t care because all that matters is that you have a little baby growing in you and you’re fifteen pounds underweight and it’s gonna take a whole lot of planning, food, perseverance, and luck to get yourself into anything remotely resembling a healthy state.

But you look down at your flat stomach and smile, almost cry, because you know that this baby will see the light of day and this baby will be exquisite.

Photo Credits:

Smitten: http://theshoppingmama.com/2010/08/fall-fashion-with-smitten/

Troll: http://mythicalcreatures13.tripod.com/untitled-page-8.html

Kicking the Bucket: http://shmault.deviantart.com/art/Kicking-the-Bucket-183815632

Witch Doctor: http://haleola.com/wp-content/uploads/web-29.jpg

Tummy Profile: Amy Hymon

Technorati Tags: cheating,love,men,women,bread,bitch,peppermint,valley,why men cheat,fake friends,whore,friend is a whore,pregnancy,cancer,baby,friendship,friends,doctors,medicine,witch doctor,faith,miracles