It’s been a while since I posted… I actually did write one but decided I probably shouldn’t publish it 🙂 I had been drinking at the time I wrote it, so you understand. There has been a whole lot of frustration going on since my last post. Nothing terrible… just so frustrating!
Adoption:
Still no word on a court date. We were told we should hear by mid month. When that came and went I sent another email to our agency asking what’s up. I’m sure they are getting very annoyed with me. They gave me a detailed response basically saying that it is a paper intensive process and we should hear when court is any day now but not to expect the date to be before mid June! FUCK! We were really hoping to have her in our arms in June. After court there could still be a 6-8 week wait before we can go get her. This whole process is very discouraging. Don’t they know how important it is to get Sofie out of there?! Don’t they know how gravely malnourished, neglected and skinny she is? I have tons of love and protein just waiting to fatten her up over here! Give her to me! I’m sure every mom who is adopting feels this way. I knew going in to this it would be a difficult, uncertain path but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle right now.
Car:
We are also needing to get a new car. Our Echo has served us well but we are nearing 300,000 kms on it and since it is over 10 years old our gas bills seem to be increasing… more than the normal increase we have been having. Buying a new car is such a difficult decision right now. We’d like to be a one car family for as long as possible but don’t know if we can manage that with Jon needing it a lot for work and me possibly needing it to take Sofie to different therapies or doctor appointments. We have a very limited budget and are already using borrowed money to pay for the adoption so trying to decide how much money to spend on a replacement family car that will eventually solely be Jon’s work car, while not knowing when we will need a second car seems like an impossible task. I hate being a grown up some times.
Family:
Then there is some family stuff that has been irking me too. I used to think that only families with rough back grounds had “stuff” but being a part of Jon’s life, who was raised as a pastor’s kid with both parents still together, my eyes have been widely opened 🙂 I now know each family has their share of issues. I’m just so tired of it all. Is there no hope of moving past the destructive structures our family’s set out for us? Are my children doomed to have to deal with the same generational crap their parents, aunts and uncles, grand parents and great grandparents have had to deal with.
Believe me, I am trying my damnedest to shield my kids from the things that I have had to endure and break any of the cycles that still persist, but Livi has already been exposed to some of it. She has seen her aunt and her uncle cut themselves off from the family for some periods of time, just as our aunts and uncles did to each other (on Jim’s side of the family… Jim is my father and I use the term loosely). She has felt the tension that it stirs up in me and witnessed all my siblings and I being reactionary as only a true (insert my maiden name here) can be. Don’t get me wrong. Livi has not even come close to witnessing the horrors I did or been victim to anything. It just seems so inevitable sometimes. My siblings and I, who have had minimal contact with Jim’s side of the family, have repeated many of the exact same behaviors and made similar choices in certain situations. It is like it is in our DNA or brain patterns.
Most people know, for very good reasons, that I have no contact with Jim. My aunt, his sister, also knows this. When I first said yes to adding her on facebook and telling her my last name there were some very clear boundaries set out. The primary boundary of the utmost importance was that she not relay any information about us to Jim. My mom advocated for her because she was the only one from that family to have gone to counseling and worked on her own family issues, as well as the only one who ever acknowledged what Jim did to us.
Last week I received a joint email to Jim, a lot of his siblings, and a few of his nieces and nephews. It was calling for everyone to forgive, forget and reconnect in honor of her mother, my grandmother, who’s dying wish was that everyone get along… even though she was a lot of the problem in that family. In the emails address bar I could see Jim’s name and email address. I assumed he could see mine. Does he now know my last name? I didn’t freak out. I knew having contact with her posed some element of a risk and it was probably an accident, since I’ve had her on my facebook for a few years now and never had an issue. I emailed her back with a pointed reminder of the importance of separation from Jim. After a few exchanges of pleasant emailing back and forth, sharing some of my history and learning a bit of hers she wrote that Jim seemed to know a lot about me, but specifically said it was not her who was telling him. In the next email she confessed to telling him about Sofie! Not just telling him that we were adopting, but where she was from, her age, and about her having DS! Really?!
This may sound trivial since I have a blog that used to be public, but he didn’t know my name so it didn’t seem to be a big worry. (The aunt and anyone on that side of the family doesn’t have access to this blog now that it is private.) Although fear does play a role in why my boundaries with regards to Jim are so set, it does not govern my life. I know what he is capable of and I know what I have to do to protect myself and my children from him. I’m not sure how this new family drama is going to play out or how it is going to affect my life (I think Jim is flagged at the border, so unless he jumps into Canada illegally we have nothing to worry about) but this is how it usually goes when you are dealing with a blood relative of Jim’s. Argh!
Becoming Human 