letter to my birthmother

You,

I have thought about you everyday of my life. Before I met you, I thought you would be a famous actress, a doctor, or a princess. I always thought that you were this perfect person who would love to have me find her.

Every time I saw a woman with brown eyes and brown hair, I thought it was you. I thought that maybe you were checking on me to make sure that I was OK.

I dreamed of you since I was little. I don't even remember being told about you, but I always remember having a sense of something missing, even before I knew about you.

I spent so much time and so many years looking for you that I was convinced I would be looking for the rest of my life, like it was never going to happen. I never really thought I would find you.

Sometimes, I wish I never did. At least I would still have thoughts of you being a perfect person who secretly missed me everyday. I always thought you must be thinking of me, especially on my birthday. I just assumed you loved me.

Then I met you. At first, I thought you were in too much shock to show me any affection. The very first thing you said to me when you walked in my door was, "Don't hug me." Then you made some crass comment about my long curly hair.

I tried for a while to like you. I even assumed I loved you. I figured the reason I felt so stupid and not good enough around you was my own fault.

I never felt good enough around you. Not even when I was on the phone with you. I always felt like I was pulling teeth to get you to talk to me.

You even told me you would have never looked for me. That devastated me. I felt like you threw me out all over again. Like I should never had tried to find you, because I was invading your space. Like I went against your wishes.

Well, you went against mine. No one ever asked me if I wanted to be deserted. No one ever asked me if I wanted to live with strangers. No ever one asked if I wanted to live in a foster home, only to get ripped out of that family, too.

No one asked me if I wanted to live in constant fear of being "given back" if I made a mistake. After all, the only mistake I made with you was being born, and I didn't even do it on purpose. Look where that got me. In some cold, unemotional agency that simply wanted to get me out of their hair just as fast as you did.

Throwing away, dumping, dropping off, giving up, no matter what you feel like calling it, it is the most devastating thing you can put on another human being. Even with all the anger I feel toward you, I would not wish adoption on you in a million years. It's far too cruel. It wrecks a person. It breaks a person. It creates a second guessing of yourself, everyone, and everything around you.

Everyone I know knows where they came from. It was their birth right. They take it for granted. Like it's some legal right they have. I never had that. I had a piece of paper that came with me saying that you had a bunch of brothers and sisters, a zillion aunts and uncles, and that you were some sort of competitive swimmer. I even thought your father lived in another country, simply because there was a typo on that paper. I grew up thinking I was from something. That I was someone that I wasn't.

Can you even imagine my shock when I learned the truth about you and me and where I came from? You can never understand it, nor would I wish it upon you to.

I wonder if you were angry about me, or about being pregnant. It seems like you must have been, and still are. I feel your anger all the time. From the very day I met you. You resented me for finding you, because I interrupted your life for a second time. You cannot deny it, because I know it in my heart. You are ashamed of me. I know you feel it with every fiber of your being. I know I do.

I have never been anything but an inconvenience to you. You have made that very clear, not just on one occasion. I wish that I could be a big enough person to say I don't hold that against you, but I do.

YOU are the one who ran away. YOU are the one who slept with a stranger at a party. YOU are the one who abandoned me.

I am head strong, and I got that from you. I know you could have kept me if you felt like it. I am aware that the circumstances would not have been perfect, but I am also aware that throughout my life, my circumstances have not always been perfect either. But I do not run from them. I don't give my issues to someone else to fix.

I believe that every person deserves to know who they are. You stole that from me. You tore it away. You took it. You stripped me of the very thing that makes a person a person. Who they are. I still don't know, and I hold you personally responsible for that.

Even my own mattress has a tag that shows exactly what it's made of. It also says, "DO NOT REMOVE." Maybe you could learn a lesson or two from something so simple.