me, the anomoly

A theme in my life is being 'the chosen one'.
My story for so long was that I was chosen. When I didn't think I was chosen by my parents anymore, I felt chosen in a grander way. I felt separated and apart from my peers; I felt chosen by a less travelled path.

I was chosen by a best friend and adopted a second time into yet another family.
I was chosen by teachers.
I was chosen by my children.
I was chosen by a need to find another way.
I was chosen by an older man, several times.


I made my choices but felt pulled by something bigger than me to take the turns I did. I always seem to be cushioned from the blows that could crush me.
I feel like an anomoly.

my yoga class today

Soften your eyes.

Notice your breath.

Directions I need to, want to follow in this life.

I bend and can unhinge my hips enough to let my hamstrings stretch longer, releasing my head closer to the ground than the last time I hung here in this room. I breathe in and use my breath to propel my spine straight and lengthen out. When the outbreath is through, I let my inhale curve me down, deep, inside, down to the floor. The pads of my fingers impact lightly and I feel the tactile delicate contact with the wood. I let my breath ride my spine back and forth and with each outbreath let the release deepen a little more, a little more.

I ride home in my minivan and listen to 'I want my MTV' by Dire Straits and laugh at how silly life is. I ride the empty highway, it fills up with tractor trailers and we all roll together side by side, what is going on in everyone else's life around me? Are they pondering their existence, if it is of value, and if it is, to whom?

My meaning is on my mind.

tell me.

I would love to read people's comments.

If you are reading this please let me know your thoughts.

-thanks-

i was marked from my beginning

I go through the passage, I am there. "There she is, there she is....theislighlisei lalskj alsdjf ..." mutterings, words but the fuzz is overtaking them...they are moving far away as if in a dream.

I heard those sounds, those voices as a girl, ages 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...in the downstairs bathroom. The wallpaper was tan with hunter green and burgundy lines becoming squares, a grid pattern. I would let my eye muscles relax and get into a "fuzzy" state and see the bigger patterns, patterns within patterns. And I would hear the voices in that bathroom. Later, when I was 16, 17 when I was practicing piano I would hear them.

I thought it must be aliens. I believe there are other realms and other worlds with other beings of higher consciousness in the universe, and I assumed I was hearing them somehow. It wasn't until after I had a hypnosis re-birth experience that one day I was hit with the realization that the voices were from the people who were witness to my birth. People who were the only witnesses of the relation between my birth mother and I.

The memory is fleeting.

"We should have gotten one for her, too."

My grandmother was apparently instrumental in my sister's adoption; I'm not sure if she had any significant role in mine. Yesterday I was at a mini family reunion where my grandmother, both aunts, my sister and my cousin with her two adopted kids were sitting around the table. My grandmother turned to me and said, "If you don't have children, when you grow old you have nothing." Then she said, "I feel bad for your aunt that she never had a baby. We should have gotten one for her, too. I just didn't think about it back then."

We should have gotten one for her, too. Like she should have gone down to the pound and picked out a stray dog for my aunt as a companion.

I can't help but wonder if the main intention in my sister's and my adoptions was to give my mother toys to play with.

My grandmother's comment is very telling. It is a testiment to my family and my life within that family. I can't help but feel that the intention of my placement into my family was to satisfy a need of my mother's which always came before my own needs for love and parenting.

After I left my aunt's house, I saw a childhood friend (who is also adopted) and we spoke about the implications of being adopted on our lives as adults. She gave me feedback that she always had the sense looking in at our family as an outsider that my sister and I had to fend for ourselves growing up; that we were on our own. This is exactly my feeling; I have always felt unsupported and that I do not have the underlying basic belief that 'my family is always there for me.' I grew up with the message that I was a commodity and my purpose was to fill someone else's lack.

stranger in a strange land

I have always had a pervasive sense of being lonely and an outsider in my life, regardless of the circumstances or environment. I suspect this is hugely connected to being an adopted person. I did not have the awareness of being 'different' from my family as a young child; it happened when I hit 14. My birthday falls in May, and the summer that followed was a time where a layer was peeled back, seemingly suddenly, and I saw things from a new perspective of 'other'. I didn't feel connected to my parents, I didn't know what I had in common anymore with my friends. I pinpointed new, different interests. I made new friends. My relationship with my parents became very much about 'I am not part of you, I am not anything like you, I do not relate to you in any way you or I understand."

I believe my birth mother was 14 when she was pregnant with me.

This split between me and my parents seemed forced upon me, not one of my choosing. It just happened, and it happened powerfully. I almost felt possessed.

A similar thread runs through my life to this day. I feel different from everyone most of the time. I am fascinated by people but I don't like to be around them. It hurts to physically be near people and feel the disconnect and not know how to bridge the gap. When I have a need to be social, I design situations where I can be with one or two or three people in an intimate setting, that way there is an opportunity to go deep.

I moved to a new town 7 months ago and I still don't know hardly anyone. I have no friends here and I don't really have an interest in making them. My life is a whirlwind of children and husband and writing spinning around a house in a suburban neighborhood. It is the first time I have lived with neighbors anywhere close to my house in over a decade. It is different, and I notice it. I am aware that there are people, families living in close proximity and I have no idea. who they are. The people on my street know my dog's name but they don't know mine. And this is all okay with me.

I go to my yoga class twice a week. I am surrounded by 20+ other people in a super intimate setting where we are wearing thin layers of clothing, pushing our bodies through a sequence of movements that stretch us physically and mentally. I go through tremendous psychic processing during each class and I suspect most of the others in the class do, too. And I am anonymous. My name is not known, but I am still part of the group. This is okay with me. I feel comfortable with this elusive quality. It does not distract from the sharing and group experience that happens. I get my social charge but I don't have to speak.

I lived in New Paltz for 7 years and felt completely at home. It is the place I most want to be in the world. And for all my time there, I only connected deeply with a handful of people. I made more acquaintances there than friends. And that was okay with me. My need to be inner was balanced with the outer there. My house there sits on a hill and is both private and exposed. I could live my inner life but every day hear a car or two or three honk out a hello! shout as our friends and acquaintances drove by. I could live on the edge of a social connect and disconnect and ride it how I liked.

This suburban living thing is strange. I don't understand it. But I guess that is my plight; I feel comfort and familiarity in feeling 'other than.'

did i remember or imagine?

I recently had a hypnosis session where I was at my birth. I was there, aware pre-crowning, crowning, being born. Did I remember or imagine? It doesn't matter, in a sense; it was a possibility. There was the possibility that she was a teenager and the world and her pregnancy were magical. Despite society's reality of the shame of teen pregnancy, her experience was one of being overtaken by an all consuming power of creation. In the midst of that, we were a team. She lived completely in the present while I grew; there was no tomorrow when we would be separated.
The birth was the shock of the outer world colliding with her inner world. The birth power pushing me out melded with the power of the adoption structure. My birth happened TO HER. I was born, I was whisked away, the outer team dissolved. The inner connection remained.

What if society's approach honored the existence and unending nature of this inner connection between birth mother and baby? I imagine the acknowledgement would elicit a more psychologically supportive structure and experience for all of the people involved. As I read both adoptee and birth mother stories, I can't help but see this everpresent connection woven throughout. The idea that it would end because of the outer, physical severance that occurs with adoption seems immature and rooted in a denial of who we are as humans. Each story reveals the circular nature of the mother-baby bond as existing out of time. There is an origin point, a distancing, and then the loop comes back around, whether the two ever physically connect again or not. The wonder and the questions, the conscious and unconscious knowings are always there.

In my stage of discovery, I am beginning to see adoption as impermanent family engineering. It is inevitable that the child will eventually want to circle back and learn his/her history.

I've started to read adoption memoirs, as a genre. I went to Amazon and ordered a bunch of books. Went to the library and found The Mistresses Daughter by A. M. Homes. I'm reading it now and am resonating deeply with it. I suspect that alot of birth parent / adoptee reunions are disappointing for the adoptee. But still, there is a drive to know, to delve into the darkness of the mystery and shine some light on something. Origins. Beginnings. History.

I, as an adopted person, have no history. The story of me begins at a point in time with hardly any description, shrouded in a fog. "We went and picked you. Out of all the babies we could have chosen, we chose you, because you were so special." Picked me from where? A garden? A shelf in the supermarket? The ocean? How did I get there? Where am I from?

The idea of a story existing that is a context where I fit in is so appealing. The idea that it could be a warm, romantic story or a scary, destructive story is almost secondary. I look forward to knowing my story. I feel like a detective. There is an element of excitement to it, and also an underlying resentment that it was not considered my birthright for me to know it, to have it without searching it out.