Tomorrow

I am so depressed that I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through tomorrow. This is not an emergency or cause for alarm — I will make it through, I always have. I’m just saying that at this point I’m not sure how.

These days my life is strange mix of frustrating predictability and an equally frustrating irregularity, and I never know which will be the one that will send me over the edge. I also never know how far over the edge it is to the bottom… or what (who?) will be there for me when I hit the ground.

Who…. who…. who….. that’s an interesting question. Who is left? Who is there for me, really there for me? Earlier this evening I had the depressing thought that the only people I have left are those who have no choice, those who are stuck with me, those who are family either by an act of birth or an act of law.

Of course that isn’t true — the “stuck with me” part, that is. The very first family I had, the family that was mine through the act of my birth, left me on the sidewalk. The family that I have through an act of law, my adoptive family, could leave me at any time also. And even if they don’t up and disappear, they can — and do — find numerous other ways to fail me. The only people left are the family that I chose, and my biggest hugest fear right now is that this depression is either chasing them away or else sowing the seeds for future hatred and resentment.

Tomorrow is another day…. but that’s what scares me. Another day, twenty-four more hours of everything all at once. Of the same and of the unknown. Of the searing loneliness and isolation, and of never having a moment to myself. Is this my path for the foreseeable future? Sometimes this is all feels so new and foreign I wonder if I wandered into someone else’s life sometime last year and forgot to leave. But other times, I can see my indelible fingerprints on my life and I know that I am living the results of my choices (or nonchoices) — no matter where I am, or what I’m doing, or what my “situation” is, I am still me. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow too.

Bookstore Music

Right now I am sitting in a comfy green chair in a large bookstore located in the corner of a very large shopping plaza.  Next to the bookstore is a Starbucks, since apparently it’s impossible to have a bookstore without a coffeeshop anymore.   There’s also a pet store, an office supply store, an electronics store, a furniture store, a sporting goods store, a shoe warehouse, as well as several others.   All of these stores are arrayed in a very large rectangle with the stores around the perimeter and a vast ocean of parking spaces in the middle.  The sidewalk that runs past all of the stores on the inside of the rectangle takes half an hour to walk.

Not-So-Perfect

Quote from a recent blog post at One World: Chinese Adoptee Links blog:

“For adopted children from China, I think it is fate that we ended up where are right now. Our birth parents gave us up, but somehow we seemed to find a life that was perfect for us.”

Um, really?  Is this person being intentionally naive?  Willfully ignorant?  Or did she forget to consider the larger picture before painting all Chinese adoptees with a poetic yet erroneously broad brush?  As a fellow Asian adoptee I would love to join hands with her and sing Kumbaya as we bathe and bask ourselves in adoptee love… but I happen to be interested in news stories about adoptees.  Like this one:

Inside a Mount Juliet home, law enforcement say 4-year-old Kairissa Mark was severely beaten and abused from head to toe by her adoptive mother, Lebanon pediatrician Deborah Mark.

Deborah Mark and her husband, Steven Mark, had adopted Kairissa from China in April, less than four months before police found their new daughter dead.

Deborah and Steven Mark now face charges in the child’s death…

And Kairissa is not the only Chinese adoptee to be killed by her Forever Family; for a longer list, see this link and scroll down to the “China” section.  These are NOT isolated incidents, and this is NOT Fate.  I’m glad that the author of the One World post seems to have had a perfect life so far, but how ridiculously naive to  think that everyone has.

What kind of “perfect life” is it to die from massive brain injuries after being thrown against a wall at the age of four, by the very people who were entrusted to care for you and be your “Forever” Family?

What kind of Fate is that?

Just Another Day

Another day, another year, another [possible] birthday. Another anniversary of the Ultimate And Original Rejection. And speaking of rejection, for some reason I literally (and I do mean literally) could not pay people to have lunch with me today. But really, should I be surprised? When I work so hard to push people away — and yes, I’m including my [former] blog readers here — it’s surprising that there is anyone left.

Which is why the phone call I received last night (technically very early today) surprised me — a friend called me at 12.05 am, someone I hadn’t talked to in over a year. Maybe I’ll write more about her later, but for now I just wanted to note her tenacity and her unwavering memory of (and unapologetic celebration of) people’s birthdays. Even the birthdays of curmudgeonly hermits like me who, at least on the surface, work very very hard to blow her off.

I am so glad that she called. I try and tell myself that my birthday doesn’t matter, that it’s just another day, that I’m really too old for birthdays (so clever! so original!), and — new this year — that *my* birth day is not the one that matters anymore.

But of course it matters as much as it ever did, and now more than ever.

The Body Remembers

Even though I am no longer pregnant, for the last week or so I have felt the tiniest, gentlest flutters just below my waist on the left side.  I am quite sure that it is just gas.  But those movements feel just like those barely perceptible kicks that remind a woman that her body is no longer hers alone — as if she has swallowed a ghost who is looking around and tapping on the walls, thinking, Yes, I could see myself living here for a while.

Even though I am no longer pregnant, my body remembers that it once was.

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At some point when I was pregnant, I heard that the baby’s cells would enter my bloodstream and stay there for the rest of my life, even after the baby had long since vacated the premises.

Rather than thinking of the little bump inside me who was shedding cells and depositing them into my bloodstream at that very moment, I immediately thought of my own cells, little pieces of ME that were floating around in a woman in Korea.  I have long thought that part of my soul was still there, but it seems that parts of my body are there also.  Those little cells of mine, they must go with her everywhere — sit with her on the subway, wend their way through crowded market stalls as she haggles with the shopkeepers, relax in the communal bathhouse when she takes a nice long soak.  Part of me is sorry that I littered, even as a fetus who obviously didn’t know any better.

But part of me is relieved that she could not completely get rid of me, even though she tried.