Birth Father in ICU

It just occurred as I went back and re-read my last post, that I probably should have been a little clearer with my thoughts. I mean, I know what I meant so therefore everyone else does too...right? No? ;) I guess what I'm wondering is how a newborn adoptee can take anything from the separation experience that would later translate into abandonment issues and so on? If the adoptee is any older than a newborn infant, then it begins to make some sense to my addled brain. And without a doubt I can understand how the birth mother would be changed by the experience. It just seems like there should be a linkage between the level of contact and the level of impact separation would have on the adoptee.

I don't know what if any impact it had on me. I would assume it would have some malingering impact but I don't know how that would be determined. Thank you for your comments both of you. I appreciate them very much. It's very isolating to have no one who understands the feelings so it helps to talk about it here. Hugs to you too.

6 days vs. 6 months. It would seem that there would be more impact wouldn't it? I don't know how to even measure what the impact would be. I think that the senses that would serve an infant such as scent and the "feeling" of being cuddled etc. would be quite intense but how would we know that? I suppose someone could interview people who were in our situations and see if their are some similarities. I am not sure how that would be assessed.

I finally bit the bullet and re emailed my brother the email I sent on New Year's eve. I asked him if he had received it. He sent a pleasant email back saying that he has run into the same response in that my father hasn't wanted to talk or only talked a minute due to the illness which makes it hard for him to talk. I took a chance and mentioned that my birthmother had said "Who" twice. He sent a very bizarre response basically mocking me for feeling sensitive. In different coloured ink which was bizarre. He insinuated that my issues with our parents are mine and he can't help me and suggested I go and think about what I had done or not done. He suggested to have a drink in moderation. I wonder if he let someone else respond it was that different. I read his response several times and then calmly stated I had thought about things for 56 years and that he had no concept of what it was like to be in my shoes and vice versa. I told him to give me a call when he's ready to hear the truth. I told him to have a few drinks. My daughter had some insight and said he was likely being protective and was overwhelmed which may be the case. I figure if we are going to be able to connect we need to be honest so if we have a difference of opinion I can take that. It's the silence that kills me. In the end he said "will do...good night" in the normal font and colour. At least there was a dialogue. I am still scratching my head over the difference in replies but maybe I hit a nerve. Who knows?

It's really difficult to guess what was up with the different fonts and colors and tone of the reply. I know that depending on the settings one uses, programs like Outlook put replies in different fonts or colors. It almost would make me wonder as you inferred, if someone else wrote it and he copied and pasted into his reply to you? I don't know how many years I've been emailing people and unless I want to make a distinction between what I wrote and what I'm quoting someone else's words, I don't alter the fonts and colors. Not to say that he didn't for some other reason, but it's tough to say why that would be. Didn't your b-mom in the past say something similar to the "issues with our parents are mine and he can't help me and suggested I go and think about what I had done or not done"? Or am I confusing your threads with someone else's?

Who knows maybe he had her reply and sent it via his email? I think they are all off their nut. I am pretty sure this is the proverbial last straw. I would have thought he was more sensitive than to "mock" me. I've composed an email laying it all out for him but I am not going to lower myself to that level. I buried my Mother. I know it must be hard. I think we are done. There is no way I am going to put myself in a position to be polite or to have to deal with people who are so self centred.

I don't know about being off their nut. But you've relayed some stuff that your b-mom said before and that seems to have a similar tone the middle part of this bit you just received. And the middle part doesn't seem to mesh very well with the start of what he wrote. Add in the different fonts and colors...I mean I don't know nothing. But sometimes if it walks like a chicken and squawks like a chicken, it's a chicken. Then again sometimes it's something else. :prop: I don't blame you for being done. If it was me, though, I'd probably go through several edit cycles of the email laying everything out, then actually send the thing. This is a failing of mine, but I don't consider it lowering myself to their level...I just feel better having the last word when things have come to the end. My scorched earth policy I mentioned in some other post in action I guess. :darth: Hang in. I think you should do something really really nice for yourself. Just 'cuz...

Thanks. I think the best thing to do is to let it go. It's time to move on.

I just have to chime in here. My birth mother sent me a cold good-bye letter after 15 good years in reunion - it's posted in another thread. All very complicated, but you may remember my story from before the new year. I debated at the time whether to send her a reply. This was like 4 months ago, and I have written and re-written a letter, poured my heart and my hurt (and my anger) into it, but I never sent it. And I haven't even looked at it in 2 months at least.You know what my problem is with sending a "scorched earth" letter like PADJ mentioned (or at least one of my problems with it)? As much as I'd love to, I think they (our bio family) have NO IDEA at all where we come from as adoptees, how this goes back to our very early childhood, it is a LIFETIME of varying issues with family, friends, identity, and now to be rejected during reunion by the very people we wanted to connect with the most just opens up a whole new can of worms for us emotionally (understatement of the year). And I just don't think they get it. They don't understand the impact and the pain (they think we did have a family, and that should be good enough). They don't understand the longing to know them (they have their whole bio family intact for themselves let's not forget). We are from different planets. I am in contact with my biobrother and as nice has he is, he doesn't understand, although he is generally sympathetic. Hell even my husband doesn't fully get it. So I just feel if I blast off this letter of a lifetime and pour out all of my anger and hurt and how much it meant to me, the betrayal and rejection etc, I can just imagine my bmother (and anybody else "insensitive" who reads it), would just look wide eyed at that letter, and just question my sanity. Just like Murphy's brother told her to go have a drink - it's like that, just saying "whoa, you are WAY out there with all this emotion and stuff, take a pill lady" So when I feel people don't "get it", they just don't get it. If they "got it", they wouldn't have been so insensitive in the first place right? Plenty of other birth parents are present for their children and "get it". I don't need to open up my inner emotional world to someone who has shown at every turn they just don't get it, only to have them possibly mock or belittle me some more, no thank you. I will take my lumps with this biofamily stuff (and these are huge lumps to swallow - I am struggling with it still). I am trying to move on. And while writing a letter would give me a sense of satisfaction, it would only TRULY work if it was received by a person willing to hear it, with the sensitivity and empathy to appreciate it. My mother I do not think is that person. Nor do I think Murphy's mom is. Sad for us both.The only thing I don't like about this line of thinking is that "they" get to wake up every morning and NOT think that they are hurting anyone today. My mother thinks of herself as a great person. I would love to find a way to have her truly look in the mirror. I just don't know how and I don't think the most brilliantly written letter will do that, it will only make me look angry, bitter, foolish and needy in her eyes. And she would rationalize, deny and suppress some more. She will entirely miss the point.This leaves me feeling out of options, and I have to face that in this situation in my life, I truly tried my best and got really hurt and it will likely bother me in one way or another for the rest of my life - the losses, the what could have beens, if they were only different. Losses for my young children too, as my bmom will soon be their only grandmother.My bmother told me to move on, and that's nice to say in theory, but one does not just forget they have an entire birth family, it's like having a limb removed and being asked to forget it was ever there.

Thanks for putting it all in words. I have doubted myself and my reaction....because I am so used to stifling what I feel and bending over backwards to tiptoe around them. I was telling a couple of friends about the "mocking" tone in my brother's response and they were shocked. That's because they know and have been there for me throughout this madness. The people in my life who have taken the time to get to know me realize how painful this is. The sad thing is there is no opening from my birth family. My mother said "If I had it to do all over again I wouldn't have made contact". She said this as matter of fact like she would speak about shopping for something or exchanging something she had bought. How do you deal with someone who is that obtuse? I have no clue. I can't fathom how my own brother wouldn't understand how cruel it was for her to say "who" after I told her who it was. And then to repeat it with a snotty tone. I get sick to my stomach thinking about it. Then he mocked me and said "Boo hoo on you". I can't believe he said that. It's so cold. He made some reference about going to my room to think about what I had done. Sarcastically. It's pretty obvious these people are incapable of thinking about anyone but themselves and their issues. It doesn't matter one iota to them how any of it affects me. It's like "How dare you" bring up anything that would be difficult to explain. They make me sick. I am sorry you had to go through the same sort of thing and I completely get where you are coming from about having to explain the unexplainable. They have each other and we have to attempt to deal with the further rejection and second guess everything we say or do to make sure we don't hurt them or look like complete basket cases because we are hurting and they don't get it. I am so sick of all of it. Thanks for your support. It means a lot to have a few people who understand.

The scorched earth policy is not a very noble goal to pursue. I admitted going in that it was a failing of mine. Thankfully it takes a while for me to get to that point, but once I'm there logic doesn't really apply. My bad...it's that when I get to that kind of point I no longer care if the people on the receiving end wonder if they need to call for the guys with the butterfly nets to cart me off to the loony bin. I've reached saturation by then, taken one step beyond and I just no longer care. There's no longer anything to work on and I'm just satisfying my myopic and emotional need to get the last words in. I think that Murphy, bn2 and I are all coming at this from similar points of view. That there are people in this world who for a variety of reasons do and say things that hurt others. It's how we deal (or not deal) with these people that is different. It is frustrating to find that we have to compromise principle in order to gain a bit of acceptance. The "oh, that's just mom/dad/whoever" type of response, as if that makes everything okay. For me, I'm getting to the point where I realize that as much as I find it maddening that people act in this way, I don't have to add insult to injury by trying to "fix" them and make them see the error of their ways. Life is too short. I had hoped to be able to build some kind of relationship going forward with my b-family but that hope is fading quickly. It's like the old saying..."never try to teach a pig to sing..."

I have a few choice words that would enlighten them about their constipated world view but as you say it would only serve to give me "the last word". It would simply reinforce their purpose to alienate me and justify their reserved attitude toward me. After all I had the audacity to exist and have feelings that muddled up their situation. I was supposed to be grateful I guess and politely stay lost.I wish that things were different. I told a very good friend about it all and I blurted out "I wish you were my brother" and he said "I will be". I can't see how I could ever impress upon my birth family what it's like to be in my shoes just as I can't imagine how it would be to have them as my allies.As Bn2 said "They have each other". That's just the way it is. They can cajole each other about how difficult it was to deal with me and congratulate themselves about having given it a shot.Or they may simply go about their business like they did before I found them. It will take a major awakening in their psyches for me to trust them enough to keep in touch. I doubt they have the capability truthfully and that fact is what it is. At them moment I find them repulsive. Shamefully lacking in empathy and I'm happy that wasn't stripped from me by living with her venomous resentment of my father's family. I've apologized over and over again for being too emotional, for having intruded, for looking for my one brother who cut off contact and I have yet to hear "I'm sorry for what happened to you". Not once.Not one of them has ever said "It must have hard for you". Not one of them has asked how things were for me. When I told my father about the neglect. abandonment and abuse he told me "Don't tell your mother because it may be too much for her".Too much for her? I lived it and I am supposed to worry about how it might affect her? That's what I got. I poured my heart out and he listened. At least I had that chance. She can remain as she is; the martyr in her own mind and they can spend the rest of their lives regaling themselves about how understanding they were.In the meantime life goes on. I lived without them for over 40 years. Now that I have rode the roller coaster it doesn't have the thrill it did. It's not quite as exciting as it was and the hills are not as high. The paint is peeling and the wheels are creaking.When the time comes to grieve and it will come; I will do it with people I can trust. My father may hang on for years or not. It's hard to say. I have already started the process of letting go and dealing with the emotional component of that grief.I wish them luck with that because so far I have not seen the capacity to express emotion. It's all stifled up in the closet where she left me. On a shelf as she once said. When it all comes tumbling down I hope they have the sense to shed a tear. The sarcasm and mockery my brother threw me as a bone when I was confused will hopefully serve them well.They can pat each other on the back politely and then thrash around in their private hell. The lie she told her family will eventually be eroded by the truth. Life has a way of eroding the pedestals some people prefer to stand upon. We'll see how they fare.

This morning I wake up to some inane, generic email my birthmother forwarded to me.Nothing personal in it; just a forwarded piece of nonsense.Go figure. I have to think seriously about the post related to carry the glass of water for days and how it cripples your hand.

MM, I think your mom and mine hang out together. It seems like no matter how many times I've tried to bring up a topic of substance (meeting...maybe...one day...?) or of some personal relevance (being in her area...having surgery done...) I get nothing in return. But let her stumble across some electronic version of a chain letter that someone forwarded to her that she finds mildly amusing and she'll forward that garbage to me without hesitation. Well, actually she doesn't even have to think to forward it to me since she plugged me into her "forward stuff" email group as I call it a long time ago. I'm just a click away for those things. The last thing she sent me was one called "God's Eye" or something. It was a photo of something that supposedly happens only once in 3,000 years or something like that. The photo was of a ring nebula, and yeah I'll admit it does have a resemblance to an eye looking at you from space. But do a Google search and see how many shots there are of this thing, or others like it. This is the junk I get. Thanks, ma. In my more magnanimous moments I sometimes wonder if this might be her weak attempt at reaching out to me, to include me in...well...something anyway. And then I take another look at the email message header find that I'm just part of some group, and snap back to reality. It's going to take a much more substantial show of interest on my mom's part to get me very interested anymore. Just jaded I guess. If I haven't exactly learned to put the glass of water down, I've at least found a little wagon to set it in so I can pull it along without having to hold it all the time.

I'm happy I am not the only one who thinks they are irritating. I am pretty sure she sends these out to anyone and everyone.