Still Sad

When I get sad, I think about abandoning this whole adoption plan and moving away and starting over.

A lovely open adoption blog I read linked to this story. It's the story of one birth mother. It's not a foreign story to me, but as all first parents stories, it moved me deeply. There have been a lot of comments, some reassuring and some not.

Adoption is work. I knew this going into adoption. It's essential to make sure it's done ethically, and maintaining some openness is delicate. It's difficult for all three triad members.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have the emotional energy to cope. Today is one of those days.

I have always known that I wanted to be a parent. I have known this for as long as I can remember. I never remember wanting to be married much. I never dreamed of a big wedding or wanting to be a princess for a day. I don't remember fantasizing about my husband or my wedding or any such thing. But I do remember always thinking about my children. I always thought about what type of parent I would be.

But it has turned out that neither my husband nor I can make a baby. So what are we to do?

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I stopped writing this and T and I went out to a lovely arts show and bought me a few neat things. We also bought a dresser that was on sale that T wanted. The art show was fabulous and inspiring. I think I'm going to sign up for beginners pottery class. I have always wanted to learn and now is a good time for me to start. Classes start at the end of April.

After the show I had beer and clams, and we had a lovely day. I am much less sad than when I wrote the first half of this post.

I still, however, feel I don't know what to do with my life right now. In some ways I want to move to Hawai'i and abandon all hopes of making a family. This journey has been too difficult and it poses too many risks and has too much pain. I sometimes feel I am too empathetic to be an adoptive parent. I see some adoptees who have such pain in their lives, and I've read and spoke to birth/first parents who are also living with extreme pain. I don't want any more pain. I want happiness.

All this said, I can't ever imagine life without parenting. We will not move to Hawai'i and we will wait and find a good match and find some way to have a relationship with our child's birthparents. We will be as good parents as we can, and life will happen.

I am just stuck here waiting and imagining everything going wrong. It's not a nice place to be, but I am trying to do things I enjoy. It's really imperitive that I take that class while I can. And when I think about these classes, I think that maybe I could go away and take classes and be a more involved and active person without children. But then I go out and see a family, and my heart just breaks.

I think this is the problem. I have a heart that has been broken too many times. It hasn't been broken by my family or by my husband, but by hope. I have had so much hope and it has broken me each time -- each pregnancy, each IVF each dIUI, each cycle. I have hoped so many times that I might have a family, and I see what we do not have everywhere around us. I'm not sure I could live this world we live in without having a family. I think it would completely break me.

I so often feel like I don't know what to do. I hate that feeling.