REGRETS

I feel bad about giving up Stevie (Erin). At the time I felt overwhelmed, helpless, very alone,  uncertain, unprepared, lost, frightened, unsupported and frightened about keeping her. I just could not see the HOW of it all.

So I went for the other side, and ended up feeling empty and defeated, resigned and a little bit hopeful that maybe one day it would be okay.

Today I still feel regret but I also feel love. Perhaps my hope was not misplaced after all.

After all my difficulties growing up as an adopted child, I really felt like I had potentially thrown her to the wolves. I hoped and prayed her home would be better than mine, but I had no say. The social workers asked me what kind of home I hoped for her to be placed in, but I had no illusions that what I said actually mattered. I signed a paper giving up all rights. I knew they looked down on me and my situation. They were going to do exactly what they wanted, and never mind what I said.

I told them I wanted her to live on a farm with animals and fresh air. Who wouldn't want that for their child? Eventually I ended up living that way myself, and then I really wished I had been able to keep her and raise her.

But one road leads to a fork, and another fork and so on. As the poem said, "But knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted that I should ever be back."

If  I had kept her, who knows where I would've ended up? Perhaps slum housing and a bad job, instead of a farm in the country. I will never know because that was not my "choice."

I quantify "choice" because I never really felt I had one. My father, the doctor, told me it was all my choice but if I decided to keep her I would not receive one dime from them, they would not acknowledge her as their grandchild, they would not allow me to use their last name anymore (I didn't know that all that time I had merely been borrowing it!), and I would have to move out of Bellevue so none of their friends or patients would ever find out.

And of course I knew nothing about welfare. Perhaps that would've been available, although once they found out that my adoptive father was a doctor, I doubt I would've qualified. I know that a year later when I applied for student loans on my own so i could take the course of study I preferred, they said my father made too much money and I did not qualify. Period. 

Some choice. A Sophie's choice, if you will. Thanks, "Dad". I felt the love.

They were so angry with me - calling me names like whore and promiscuous. I only slept with my boyfriend, a completely natural act, and I was totally in love with the guy. Hell they were in love with him, too - Barb handing him her credit card to take me shopping, and the car keys to her cadillac to take me out. I was being pimped out by my own mother. And then they act surprised that we were sexually active? Come on people. We even bought lingerie with that credit card. Did she never look at her statements? Call anything into question?

No he was from a "good" family - father a prominent lawyer and he had prospects. I think they were hoping for a marriage, but instead they got a grandchild - unacknowledged of course. They only saw it as a pregnant, embarrassing teenager.

I told Doc that people would only look down on him because of my pregnancy if he was the father. He didn't like that much, but I'm still sure I was right on that account.

They sent me away to live in an unwed mother's home in Spokane and made me change my name. I was known as Lisa Hayes for that year, and I had to send letters to some friend of theirs in Victoria, BC who forwarded them in another envelope to Seattle - again, just in case, someone "saw" the return address on the envelope and discovered their dirty little secret. Honestly, it was like THEY had done something wrong. I found out years later that they had told their closest friends - it was only me who was not allowed to talk about it with anyone. I had not one friend who knew my predicament. Sixteen years old and completely alone in the world - living with strangers - and yet they were so hard done by. It was completely ridiculous and overly dramatic, in my opinion. I was the one doing the hard work, and they were the ones getting the support. Why did I even care what they thought?

I think it was because I have a wound, a wound caused by abandonment - and the feeling of possibly losing another family was just too scary to contemplate. I knew they didn't approve of me, but sometimes I t hought maybe my father liked me a little. It wasn't much but it was a crumb.

This piece of writing can never fully be completed, but here it is. Part of who I am.