On the Fence

I posted at length a couple of months ago during a very turbulent time in my reunion with my birth father. For the back story, [URL="http://forums.adoption.com/adoptee-support/424816-hoping-some-support-mess.html"]the thread is here[/URL]. Right now I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Things got very, very ugly between us back in January/early February, and we slowed down/ceased communicating for a while. That was very painful for me, but also immensely helpful. I feel stronger, calmer, and more able to care for and protect myself in this process than I had let myself get for a while there, when I was feeling really emotionally vulnerable and wide open and paying the price pretty dearly. We have resumed contact, communicating at a fairly surface level, and he's recently broached the topic of us meeting in person again (after having met once in January). I am having a hard time at this point getting to the bottom of how I feel and what I want. I realize that my first few months of communicating with my birth father could have been treated with much more care on all sides from the very beginning, even the good parts. And I think all parties have had time to cool off and gain some much needed perspective. But I just don't really know what to do next. It's all well and good to communicate somewhat superficially, as I do with distant friends or other relatives I rarely talk to. But if I'm going to have any meaningful relationship with this person, there are conversations I think we will need to have, and I don't know if I can do that. I sort of feel like I opened myself up completely (probably not the best idea at the time, but it is what it is), and I felt so hurt and embarrassed and ashamed and guilty and generally ****ty when things went south, that now I feel kind of ambivalent about the whole thing. I'm not a non-feeling, ambivalent person generally, and I think it's my way of just protecting myself. I have told my birth father this, that one of my defense mechanisms when I am in pain is to channel that pain into numbing myself to it, so that I don't care at all. And I think that is sort of what has happened. When things were very bad in January and I got an email from my birth father telling me that "now was not a good time for any of this," I took that as a fresh rejection--it was hard to interpret it any other way. And I talked with my therapist and we both contemplated whether this may actually be better for me in the long run, etc. I talked with my parents about it (including my dad who has raised me since I was 6 months old, for all intents and purposes my very real dad), and I think we all sort of came to the conclusion of "well, now you know. now you know what's out there and it hurt very badly but we're all better and stronger and closer for it." His email felt so final that I spent a lot of time in the weeks after that sort of emotionally reaching some place of closure and peace. He has since said that his email wasn't meant to be taken that way, but at the time it seemed like a pretty clear ending. So now that we have texted and/or emailed intermittently and both apologized, etc., I'm just in the weirdest place. When he invites me to visit him, I find myself internally saying a sort of "ehh...I don't know. I really don't know about this." And it's hard for me to get past that point. I also am not ready to give up and shut the door forever. He has a wife and other children that I think, deep down, I'd still like to meet and know (I had wanted to from the very beginning, but I needed time to get to a point where I was ready for that, and that process was interrupted by all of us taking turns mucking it up, myself included for sure). My family and my boyfriend are also worried for me. They are supportive and will stand behind me no matter what I want, but they saw the toll this took on me and they are understandably far less forgiving of my birth father. And it's hard for them to identify with the other feelings I'm having that would give me any reason to try again, because they're not in my position. I sort of feel silly talking about it with them because I worry that in their minds they're thinking I'm crazy for putting myself through anything more, especially when, apart from this aspect of my life, I am so lucky and blessed and loved and don't necessarily "need this," so to speak. I think there's a lot of wariness on all sides. I don't know. Our communication is pretty sporadic and seems so bizarre in contrast to how much more genuinely and honestly we were talking at one point. It's all very pretty and polite and careful. And I really appreciate that because I think all of us felt pretty burned before this point. But my question is what do I do next. And how do I even figure out what I want? One thing that is so frustrating about this process (and actually really fascinating from an intellectual standpoint) is the need and simultaneous incapability to "define" or "categorize" what this will be for all of us. At multiple points, my birth father has said "Do you want me to be your friend? or your dad? or what?" My answer is always "I have no idea because I don't know you." And I think that's the core of my struggle. I have seen very different sides of this man--some great, and some very concerning. But I do identify with him and we are alike in ways that it's really exciting to have discovered. But it's hard to take all the different facets and not wonder which one is the dominant trait...because I think my answer to all of these questions, to the question of "what I want" really depends on that. Which may just be another way of saying something much more simple than all of my above rambling: mistakes were made on both sides a few months ago, and it hurt me, very, very badly. I don't say that to play victim or claim no responsibility. But it was so hard, and really kind of traumatic, for lack of a better word. And I think the idea of opening myself up to the possibility of feeling that way again is terrifying, and I don't know if I can do it. Or if I want to. But I also don't think I want to just shut the door and give up. I guess this is a long way of saying that I feel so scared I'm incapable of getting past that fearful feeling to figure out what I want out of all of this. And I know I have time to think and work through things, but the limbo is driving me crazy. I'm not used to not knowing or understanding what I want or feel. Bleh. Anyway, was just checking in/reaching out to see if any of you have experience with this feeling, and how you dealt with it.