Tears, Tired, Time

I slept through my first class this morning. It also just so happened to be the only day the professor was handing something out I can't just print myself off of her website...stupid stupid stupid me and my lack of sleep.

Last night I cried in front of Andrew. He told me that my theories of being a better mother to adopted children than biological children were totally bogus. I was tired-to say the least-and got all emotional. I told him that it was so easy for my mother to give me away, so easy for my grandmother, when I looked just like them. They always figured I would be fine because the women in my family are survivors. They looked into my face that was a mirror of theirs and left me alone in the wilderness anyway because I would survive.

I'm afraid that if I have a child of my own it will be that easy for me. That regardless of my good intentions, that I'll be like them. Sending my helpless children off into the world alone because I know that they'll be alright, they're part me.

That it won't be as easy to abandon a child that has nowhere else to go. A child that I had to save in the first place. A child that needs a hero. This obviously leaves much to be worked through, which was Andrew's first statement, but it's truly how I feel. He said that it was a really big step for me to tell him that, but that we are definitely going to need to go through some counseling and work this out before we bring any children into our home at all, biological or adopted.

I find that I'm a thousand times more vulnerable, emotional, and overall expressive when I'm tired. I know I'm not alone on that island.

Lately I've just been remembering over and over what it felt like repeatedly as a child to cry out for my mother trusting that she would come hold and soothe me as she had just a few years before, only to be disappointed every time because Robert had been victorious. She either didn't hear me or didn't come. Frank was then victorious. His emotions were above mine.

I keep remembering was it was like as a 6, 7, 8,12,13,14,17,20 year old curled up in a ball with my hair matted to my face with tears waiting for her to show me that she really does love me. That all those times she abandoned me over and over again were mistakes.

But she didn't and she never will. I will always feel like a frightened six year old girl standing in the middle of an empty forest, waiting for her to come find me.

Figuring out what to do with that is the hardest part.