Lately, people asking me what’s going on with our adoption situation has been turning me into a ball of angsty rage.Â
As with most of my outward emotions, I’ve done quite well in holding in this hulk-like anger, but it’s probably not great for my stress levels.Â
So I finally took a moment to examine the reactions I’ve been having and I think I’ve figured it out.
It’s my own fault, really. We’ve known for so long that adoption would be part of our family building plan that I tried to brush past all these feelings of anger, of grief and loss. And of course, the ever-present feeling of Failure.
Except I still feel all those things. I’ve been feeling them more and more actually.Â
And so everytime someone brings up the “a” word to me, I feel like I’m being cornered, as though THEY are the ones guilty of pushing me into moving on before I’m ready. And I have to stop and remind myself that I was the one who did that.Â
I have a confession to make.
And no, I DO still want to adopt, it’s not that at all.Â
But I confess that in this process, I’ve been so desperate to put on this brave face that I’ve used adoption like a shield and as such I’ve let it become a topic that now feels even more painfully complex than it already was.
I’ve talked to people about adoption so that I don’t have to talk about how much the rest of it hurts, and then I wince in pain when people don’t understand that I’m still struggling with the the fact that by adopting now, I am at least partially capitulating to the fact that I probably won’t ever get to experience certain aspects of parenthood.Â
The problem? I don’t want to talk to people about that stuff. And now, I don’t want to talk to them about adoption either.
Like I said in my last post…
Denial.