Day 6 -- Good Enough

"The last time she had seen her only child, he had been a squalling, red-faced babe.  Perhaps the time to discover who had adopted him had finally arrived."

We say that life is about choices, but sometimes I think life is more about chance than choice.  This week's prompt is probably a lot closer to me than I'd like.  I've run the gamut from wanting to write a piece from my grandmother's perspective (though she's dead,) to wanting to write from the perspective of someone who's all ready dead--like, say, my grandmother.

You see, a little before my dad passed away, I found out that he had been adopted.  Unfortunately, his real mom passed away when she was forty from a heart attack (yay family medical history!)  I only ever got to meet my grandmother's family at my dad's funeral, and it was strange the way they kept looking at me--as though seeing a ghost or something of the sort (though I wouldn't blame them seeing as how they'd probably never seen an albino before, either.)

My grandmother's name--I can't even remember what her cousin, Ruth, told me it was, now.  I'd have to go looking through old letters, and who knows what kind of truths were buried with her death.  I never did contact their family again or stay in touch with them like I probably should have....

Anyway, my grandmother had married a man named Sam Adevi.  Her family seemed happy, though riddled with various tragedies--like most families.  Looking at the pictures that Ruth sent to me, I always felt as though my grandmother was never quite happy having her picture taken or that there was something in her expression that said she wasn't quite happy.  Was it a longing to know about what had happened to my dad?  Did that linger with her?  Did she ever talk about it with anyone besides Ruth?

There are a hundred things my real grandmother could have been, and the worst part is, I'll never know what those things were.  My dad's adopted mom passed away a few years ago now from lung cancer.  She and I were never very close--except...I remember nights when I'd get to crawl into bed with her, eating raisin bran and watching the Lawrence Welk show.  She used to enjoy that show, I think.  And every time we visited, there was always new clothes or something of the sort.

She knew I loved strawberries, and she always had a bowl out; she'd have sugared them, too.  My grandad liked caramels, and ...we used to sing the Burger King song to one another--though I've no idea why.  *laughs*  I don't even know if he liked to eat there or not.

She knew I loved strawberries, and she always had a bowl out; she'd have sugared them, too.  And in the mornings, if there were doughnuts, there was always a glazed twist; I loved those things.  My grandad liked caramels, and ...we used to sing the Burger King song to one another--though I've no idea why.  (Grandad: Who has the best darned burger in the whole wide world?  Me: Burger King and I!)  *laughs*  I don't even know if he liked to eat there or not.

So I didn't want to have to delve into those dark places inside of me when writing today's prompt--even though I had a hundred ideas of things I could have written about.  I mean, imagine finding a book that your mom or your grandmother wrote; now imagine how much more those words would mean if they were the only things you had left of them--not even memories to treasure.

BUT...rather than write something that I wasn't even sure I could do any real justice--just a silly wish-fulfillment of words from someone I never really knew--I decided that it might be interesting to consider a different kind of scenario--where it wasn't the mother's choice to give away her child, but society's laws that demanded it.  I don't want to go so far as Brave New World, or even something as creepily fantastic as Never Let Me Go, but what happens when you're classified as clinically psychotic while you're pregnant?


Good Enough

I'm doing better now.  My doctors have me on some new medications, and we'll be adjusting the levels over the next few weeks to see how it affects me.  Hopefully we can get the doses right.

I've been divorced for seven years now; they made me sign the papers.  He didn't want children, but I thought that was just something that people always said.  He had me committed during the pregnancy, and he wasn't even there for the boy's birth.  And it kills me inside, knowing that he put our child up for adoption.  I wasn't fit to be a mother, though.  I know that now, but back then...back then I thought he was trying to kill me because I was pregnant with a child he didn't want.

He didn't want the child, though.  But he wasn't trying to kill me.

We worked through my bi-polar disorder together for the first couple of years, but he told me one day that he wanted a divorce.  I thought everything had been going so well.  I thought...I thought a lot of things back then, and I hated him; and I wanted him to die.  And then I wanted to die.

I used to imagine what life would be like when they let me out of here--how we'd be a perfect family: John, the baby, and I.  I used to imagine our lives, and the neighbors we'd have, and the people we'd be.  I'd imagine our cars, and the conversations we'd have after we got home from work; though at first, I'd stay home with the baby until he was old enough to start preschool and day care.  But we'd both have jobs, then; we'd have to.  Taking care of a child is expensive.

I told Dr. Walsh today that I wanted to look into my son's adoption--that if the parents were willing, I wanted to get to know my son.  He wasn't optimistic, but he thought this was a good sign--that I had started looking outside of myself to the rest of the world.  He told me to write down my thoughts, and we'd discuss them next time.

I'm scared.

The baby is a part of me--the me I used to be.  Dr. Walsh says it's a first step, though--accepting the reality of things as they are, not as I want them to be.

What if the parents don't want me around though?  What if they named him something awful?  What if...what if....

They tell me I shouldn't worry too much about the 'what ifs'--that those words aren't going to help me because they are speculative and part of a world that is made up of fears instead of realities--that I shouldn't surround myself in the fear of what might be if I want to embrace the truths of reality.

Dr. Walsh says that fears are normal.  That's why he wanted me to write this.

"Write them down, Clara," he said.  "Then we can talk about them and hopefully put a few of them to rest."

I like that--putting fears to rest, but I'm worried they might wake up again when I'm not looking--like dead people rising from their graves and trying to take you back under with them.

So it's a fight, I suppose.

I'm really scared that they'll find out that I'm bi-polar and not want me around my--their--son.  I'm afraid of what I'll do then.  I'm afraid I might let the corpses drag me to the graves then--that I'll want to die and that this time I'll really do it.

We'll devise a strategy for that, probably.  There's always a strategy--some little thing you do when the grave-people rise up again from their graves so that they don't get you.  It'll be good to have that, I think.

So there's that.

I'm not sure what else to say right now, Dr. Walsh, and I'm actually typing this out on the computer instead of writing it down on paper.  I know you say that paper isn't something I can delete, but I could tear it up just as easily.  Start a fire with it, even.  But I won't delete this.  I'll even print it out, too.

I hope this is good enough.