Hubbub & Hooplah

It's been a few of weeks since I've made the time to write a blog posting.
This is not a direct indication of a lack of things going on, in fact it's exactly the opposite.
Those of you who read my tweets know that it's been a few weeks of new kitty fun, deck building ... uh... fun... (yeah right!) and general work mayhem (o.k, so that's nothing new)
But I needed to ground myself for a moment & get back to my writing, so here's a quick little update for y'all.


June 16th, we brought home our newest fur-baby, Blue.  The first few days were horrible because he wouldn't stop crying for his family (he used to live with his Mom, Dad, Brother, Grandma & two dog-siblings, and they were left on their for at least 12 hrs a day! Why some people get pets is astonishing to me. But I digress...) Now he seems to have adjusted to life with Topper, Bronx & Atilla and he's fitting into our family wonderfully!

I was initially skeptical about having a new kitty come into the house.  Sess's death seemed a little (LOT!) too recent, and a thoughtless tweet from an ignorant follower (saying I must not have loved Sess that much if I was replacing her so soon) had me really doubting that I wanted to keep Blue, long term (we took him from a bad home under kinda 'foster parent' status)   But seeing him find his place within our fur-family, and getting to know his spunky little personality has assuaged my fears.  Sess is never going to be forgotten, never can be replaced and anyone who has ever had a pet and been close to an animal knows that one can never ever replace another due to their vastly differing personalities!

There will be many more pictures in the near future :0)

June 17th my parents left for a 6 day vacation to Florida.  This is when the REAL mayhem began as we decided to build them a MUCH needed deck in their backyard.   My mom has Multiple Sclerosis and has been unable to get into her backyard for 3 years due to the poorly designed steps (sans handrail) that led out of the kitchen door.   6 days of rain (blood, sweat & tears) and .... 

THEY LOVED IT :) 

There it is - partially finished.  As finished as we could get it considering the torrential downpours that happened 3 out of the 6 days they were gone.... We've since put up some privacy lattice in the back corner & more railings.... you'll see it all when I post the step-by-step build photo post! \
All in all, despite how much hard work it was and how difficult it was to juggle our full time business responsibilities with doing a personal project after work hours... it was incredibly worthwhile, just seeing my Mom happy in her yard again, and hearing that she sits out there every morning for her coffee.  


And otherwise how have I been?  Emotionally? Mentally? Well, busy is good but I'm definitely ready for my own little vacation (despite that I don't see it happening anytime soon).  I've been holding myself together despite a HUGE amount of work stress and an overfilled schedule, so all in all I'm pretty proud of myself.   One of the residual effects of my past experiences with mental illness is that I'm always waiting for the stress to make me fall apart.  I think I'm finally learning to trust my coping skills.  It's a good feeling.  So that's the feeling I hold onto now, on high stress days (much like TODAY!!!!! :P) and it helps me get over the initial hump of anxiety when something goes wrong and lets me get onto the down-slide back to a less anxious state much quicker than before.

I've been taking a (not voluntary) break from tweeting and blogging due to the recent events of my life, but I'm hoping that things will calm down enough for me to regain some of my zen & start writing on a more regular basis again.  I've really missed it, and I've been missing all of you!  My last post about adoption was a bit risky subject for me and a comment I responded to had me doubting my desires to return to the blogosphere.  Maybe I'm too sensitive for this kind of open book exposure online. But my dear friend @PlaiduhPus (you can check out her NEW blog here) said "just blog."  So I am.  And hoping for the best.   You see, I am all up for discussion.  I like conversation.  But when someone posts a negative response to a touchy blog post & on top of it all does it ANONYMOUSLY it kinda irks me.   And it irks me even more to be judged about my irkiness. (which is what happened when I talked about the situation on Twitter.) But... in an attempt to thicken my skin (good practice for me in real life too) I'm back and I won't let anyone get to me.


(ok, that's not true. Stuff will still get to me, but I'm not about to let it stop me :P)

Till next time! Peace! <3

Adopted

 I've been thinking about adoption a lot.

Maybe it's because I've been watching that show "16 and Pregnant" during my "breaks" from work. The show has got me doing a lot of thinking in of itself, and a lot of it has to do with the one girl who decided to give her baby girl up for adoption.

That young woman was my birth mother 29 and some odd years ago.
She had to debate, with my birth father, whether or not they felt that they could raise me.
They had to ponder on what kind of life they would give me if they kept me.
They weren't 16, but they were young, and they had their vision of their futures.  It did not involve parenting.

I have always known that I was adopted.
For as long as I can remember I knew the story by heart - how my mom had been pregnant with a baby boy and had an ectopic pregnancy resulting in an emergency hysterectomy.  I knew the story about the waiting, the agony of being 'examined' to see if they were 'worthy' enough of being parents.

It's horrible what they make people go through - every time I think of it I recall a tweetie who once tweeted (or blogged, and I'm quoting VERY loosely so if it's YOU then I'm sorry if I get it wrong!!) "All I need to do to get preggo is buy a 6 pack, start smoking crack, and have sex in the back seat of a car."  It sure seems like people far far FAAARR less worthy of being parents are given the gift of a child on an all too frequent basis.   But I am digressing.  This is for another post.

The fact that I have always known that I am adopted has made much of my life a series of questions. Up until recently, only CLOSED adoptions were permitted in Ontario.  This meant that I know nothing about my birth parents, where they came from, or how they lived. I've always wondered, who am I "supposed" to be?  I have always had these 'urges'.  I've always been drawn to a life far from the one I'm living, intrigued by different lifestyles (often ones which seem to make my parents cringe).  Where do these urges come from?
More recently, as I'm getting older I'm starting to also really want to know what I'll look like 5, 10, 15 years from now.  I have no way of knowing.

What little I do know sparks my curiosity even more.   When I read the disclosure from the Children's Aid Social Worker who was in charge of the adoption all those years ago, I get shivers down my spine reading the many similarities between myself and these two youngsters, my birth parents (I'm now about 8 years older than they were when they had me).

It is not easy to find people in Toronto, despite the fact that I now know the name of my birth mother and where she was born, and where she lived when I was born. 
Especially people who may not want to be found.  And I am scared to find out that she doesn't want to be found, so thus far I am just sitting on the information I have, holding it close, but not too close.

It seems like I do that with a lot of things - hold them close, but not too close.  My animals are an exception to that.  But with people I have a hard time (as you know if you follow my tweets.)  I wonder how much of that has to do with my adoption. I wonder how much of my inherent loneliness comes from my adoption.  I wonder if I cling to the wrong people sometimes because I still have unconscious (and sometimes conscious) feelings of abandonment.

Despite the fact that I have loving parents and family, I had plenty of everything growing up, I got a top notch education, and  I always had all the necessities I needed, I still wonder.

I don't want to come across here as being anti-adoption.  I am far from that.  I think that adoption is a wonderful way of making sure that children are loved and cared for, which in my option should be the #1 priority in our world. I just really feel that children need to know where they come from, and what their genetic story is.

Lets face it, there are just certain things that there is no escaping from, and genetic make up is one of those things.  I have never been able to answer the question "Is there any heart disease, cancer, diabetes (etc etc) in your family?" I would really like to be able to one day.

I would like to know my story - my WHOLE story, not just the details that my Mom remembers of after I was born, but all the details, of my heritage, my history.

I feel as if I live my life as a series of unanswered possibilities.
If I knew that my birth parents were doctors, for instance, would that have made me more motivated to stay in University and pursue a more demanding (and respectable) career? Was it the fact that I knew that my birth mother got pregnant at a young age that made me feel like I should be sexually mature and experience before my time? Did those feelings lead me down certain destructive paths I have taken in my life?

As I mentioned before, I've always felt a pull towards a lifestyle vastly different from the one I was raised in. Perhaps if I knew what kind of lifestyle my birth parents lived I would not feel so estranged .Maybe I'd relax, knowing that I'm not doing anything 'wrong' but just living differently than my Mom & Dad would have preferred. Maybe if I knew that my birth parents lead a similar life to mine I would not feel so guilty for having disobeyed my Mom & Dad.

Maybe I'd feel my destiny for a change.

So many questions, so many curiosities.  I'm not sure what I will do with them, but for now they remain floating in my head, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.

I love my Mom & Dad, so that right moment may never actually arrive due to the pain that I feel it may cause them.  I'm not sure that they will ever understand my need to find out where I come from.  I don't blame them- they did an amazing job raising and taking care of me and it must feel a like abandonment to them when they think about my curiosity.

But all the same, that curiosity is growing daily.  Especially when I am faced with judgments from my family about how I live my life. And when I am faced with feeling alone, lonely, different.  I have never really felt comfortable being entirely 'myself' around my parents, or my extended family.  There has always been a filter to protect them from my cussing, my rage, my insecurities, my doubts, my wildness, my occasional vulgarity, my inner party girl.   I wonder whether or not that filter would be there if they were my birth parents. 

The notion of unconditional love also makes me ponder.  There have been countless ups and downs in the small unit of our family, and my Mom & Dad have professed unconditional love throughout them all.  But yet, despite their claims, I feel that I am somehow substandard, not achieving enough, not quite the package that they were hoping for 29+ years ago when they were awarded the greatest gift of their lives. 

I'm not sure what I had hoped to achieve by writing this post.  There isn't a definite point here.  I feel it's important to share the views of an adult adoptee (of a closed adoption).

So many wonderful ladies who I have met through my own battle with infertility have begun their adoption journey.  Some have been struggling through their journey for far too long already. I hope that I haven't stepped on any feelings with this post, and again I'll re-iterate that I am certainly NOT anti-adoption.  I just wanted to open up a discussion between us all because I have faith that every last one of you amazing women hoping to adopt will one day hold a baby in your arms.  And that baby may one day grow up to have the curiosities and questions that I have.  I feel it's important for those curiosities and questions to be explored together, and maybe this discussion can help prepare for that day.

My life on this blog has always been an open book to you all, I hope that my honesty and openness about this slightly touchy subject is not in any way hurtful or painful for any of you, my dear readers.  Please join in on my discussion of adoption, whether it be from the point of view of an adopted person, or an adoptive parent. 

blargh.

Prepare yourselves.
I'm angry.
I'm sad.
I feel guilty about both of the above.
I'm not sure where the guilt is coming from - story of my life.

This post may be a doozy.

I haven't blogged in a week.  Yesterday was a week since Sessie had to be put down. I have been moping through, trying to be 'normal' ever since.

I even went on a mini-camping trip this weekend, which turned into more of a booze fest/stay up all night like teenagers trip.  Not exactly what the doctor ordered for me.   Not saying it wasn't fun, but now I gotta add recovering from a party weekend to the list of other stuff going on in my mixed up head.

I miss Sess terribly every day. Every time something in my life went wrong she was such a strong support to me.  She was always there through my workdays which more often than not are incredibly frustrating, boring & upsetting. I miss her little voice. She'd so often wake up from a cat nap and say "prrrow?" really softly from her spot on the armrest of the couch right beside where I do most of my work.  I really miss that.  It reminded me to breath sometimes when things are work are just too overwhelming. And I miss having her as a reminder of my life before D.  I feel like I've all but lost the woman I was before. She was the last concrete link.

I have been withdrawing (other than on Saturday night when I was quite outgoing in my smirnoff ice induced mood).  My tweeties may or may not have noticed that I'm kinda quiet. (For a change...) I don't know what to say!  Everything that comes out of my mouth feels like a complaint, and since I know so many people on Twitter who are going through such hard times I would rather be a supporter than a complainer. 

But I don't really know how at the moment.  Nothing feels good.  Everything feels faked, forced, frusterating.  And my fuse is extremely short.  EXTREMELY.  Like.. maybe non-existent.  Don't light a match around me. I'll blow.

Today when D got back from work we were short with each other.  And now he's gone out for the evening leaving me to stew.  This is a very bad bad thing. I don't stew well.

I've been trying to throw myself into work but it's frustrating knowing that I have no financial control or freedom, despite my immense responsibility to this company. I am resentful. This makes me not want to work, but the thought of having free time to think is terrifying me.

All in all - I'm pretty toxic at the moment. 
And in an effort to not toxify you, my dear readers, I will say goodbye now and hope that the next time I write I'll be a little (or a lot!! Fingers crossed!) aggravated.