Tomorrow is my birthday and Saturday I got a card from my birthmother.  Or as I call her, my progenitor.  Birthmother suggests a woman who wants to keep her baby, but can't and decides to give them a better life.  Rather than what she did, give me away to strangers at 6 months old, because she was sick of being a mom.  Hey, I get it. Not all people are cut out for this.  It's hard.  Especially with zero support.  BUT...you do not give away a 6 month old baby, you realize that shit right after they are born.  Though usually, it's before.  Well, I can't be too hard on her, she did actually want to give me up at birth, but only because of two reasons: her mother was forcing her and her boyfriend left her.  Turns out, he wasn't my father, so it was a good thing he left (I mean, if she loved him so much, why did she have sex with his best friend, even before she had sex with her boyfriend?--though I know my birthfather, he may have did was my rapist did, and made her feel like she couldn't say no...but I have no idea, I wasn't there).  So at the last second, my grandmother said "Bring her home!" and so she did.  And as it turns out, she wasn't mother material.  And that's something I really do understand.  Not all people are like me.  Sometimes I forget that.  I was born to be a mother and to give up everything (well, I don't feel I gave up anything at all, actually, as this was my path) to be only a mom.  Not all women want that.  And so in my opinion, not all women should be mothers.  I always high five the women who say "I will never have kids", because too many women are forced to do it and don't want it.  So kudos to the gals out there who don't feel society's parental fetish who think every single person should be a parent. 

But then there is me.  The product of all this bullshit.  The one who was ripped out of the only home I knew, the only people I loved and knew, and put into foster care at 6 months old, and then moved to another home, and then to yet another, all before the age of two.  That has seriously fucked me up in life, giving me a higher ACE score before I turned 5.  Oh, and then being adopted into a fucking abusive alcoholic home??  Yep.  I was destined to be in this life I guess.  Being 45 tomorrow and still trying to undo allllllllll this bullshit that started with her.  How can I not be angry about it?  I wouldn't even have given it a second thought if I hadn't found out about being 6 months old and given away.  Well, that's not true.  I was always angry at her for not saying "I am sorry!  I am sorry you had a shitty upbringing, that makes me feel horrible that my choices put you in that!!"  Not that I blame her, she had no idea that would happen.  But the fact she takes ZERO responsibility for it, as though it had nothing to do with her (I mean it didn't, but it also did).  

For my 40th, do you know what kind of card I got from her?  

I didn't.  She fucking forgot. 

My 40th fucking sucked, by the way.  All because I expected too much and got nothing in return.  It was my own fault, but it wasn't my fault that my grandma (my birthmother's mother, who I've always had contacdt with) and my birthmother both fucking forgot my 40th birthday.  So I did a childish thing and got on my son's Facebook and wrote to both of them and shamed them for forgetting.  So I got two belated cards in the mail that year.  No "Oops, I am sorry we forgot".  My birthmother got me a handmade card, and copied a sentiment from a Hallmark card in her handwriting, to make it look like she wrote it.  I was like, um....that's super fucked up.  Either send me the Hallmark card or write a fucking note yourself.  

And this year, she sent me a "LovePop" card, which folded out into flowers.  And instead of getting the blank one where she could write something herself and maybe include some pics or something cute, she opted to pay $5 more to have them print me a note from her (that she wrote) and have them send it to me...with, yet again, something she copied from a Hallmark card.  

Sigh.  Why not send me real flowers with the Hallmark card instead?  I mean, I hate real flowers, I am not hating on the cute card.  I am hating on the fact she can't AT ALL be real with me and just handwrite me a note or something on her cards.  Or stop being a wiener and send me the actual card she copied the sentiments from.  I don't get that.  Does anyone else do that?  Copy Hallmark cards to make people believe you're a poet?  Because nobody buys that.  

So, I am scouring the Hallmark site to find the card she copied.  I don't know why.  I just want to see proof of it.  

Here is the real issue I have with my relationship with her: 

She calls me her daughter.  She tells people I am her daughter.  Not her birthdaughter, but her daughter.  Which is so beyond fucked up to me.  But I don't know how to tell her.  Maybe I could just ask her one day to stop?  If she says it again or she writes it on something I see (like on her Classmates.com profile says she has one daughter), I could just say "Hey, can you maybe not degrade what our relationship is here?  Because by pretending we're mother and daughter and not birthmother and daughter, you are removing all the shit we'd been through because of it.  Saying I am your birthdaughter is like a badge of honor, not something negative.  But by ignoring it, you're acting like it is."  Plus, it's just infuriating.  I am not her fucking daughter.  She did not raise me.  She is my birthmother.  There is a HUGE difference.  But she keeps going around, playing pretend, telling people she has a daughter that lives in another state.  Which is bullshit.  

Oh, and we stayed with her for a week back in 2008 and she literally got angry with me for not stepping up and doing the dishes.  I kept our stuff clean and nice and was so worried the entire time that we were imposing, so I made sure everything went as smoothly as possible.  But she had the nerve to get angry with me for not doing the dishes one night...the next day, we went home.  Apparently, she is horrible with houseguests (so says her sister).  But still...you want to call me your kid and you can't even spend a week with me without being annoyed??  Fuck, I am glad you weren't my mother.  I had enough of that with my own mother.  

There is a point when you are surrounded by narcissists in life where you start to believe the issue is YOU and not them.  She did nothing to make me feel like I belonged in her life, either.  In fact, I can give you all a laundry list of things she's done to make me feel like the exact opposite.  

And yes, narcissism runs through her family like diarrhea at a spoiled meat convention, just like my own family.  She's either a reverse narcissist or a SEVERELY codependent person.  Though, are they any different?  

What was her excuse for forgetting my 40th?  Maybe my birth happened so long ago that she just couldn't keep track anymore?  She has a track record for missing holidays and birthdays with us.  And now, both my grandma and her play a game that if I don't send them a card, they don't send me one.  And if they were my friends, I'd totally say that was okay.  But I didn't ask to be born.  I didn't ask for the bullshit both of these women created for me in my life.  Both of them are at fault for how my life came to be in this world.  And while I am 45 now (in a few hours), I know I have my own responsibility for my life (and have for many years), I still can't say "Oh well, you guys.  No biggie."  Because what they did to me does matter.  And I will find a way through my anger one day.  I will come out the other side about this entire thing and forgive them and move on.  But right now, and for the past few years?  Was the first time I actually started processing my anger.  So I am at the beginning of this still.  And will be for some time.  

Now, my birthmother has ASD, like me (as does my birthfather).  He's a raging narcissist (and I mean OVERT) with paranoid personality disorder, as was his sister, who was a violent abusive asshole.  My birthmother is a reverse narcissist, who has no empathy for humans (only animals), which both she and her sister have told me.  My maternal aunt (her sister) is a raging narcissist.  My maternal grandmother is a raging narcissist.  My uncles--I have no clue.  But this shit runs through my DNA like I said above.  And yet, somehow, I didn't inherit it.  I did inherit their ASD.  But not the narcissism or lack of empathy.  Even though I was raised by one.  Crazy.  

As I was writing this, my birthmother actually called me on the phone--first time in maybe two years or more??  Wow, that was fucking weird.  She forgets my 40th, which was a big deal to me (also, I had JUST gone no contact with my actual mother so, my birthday was really weird that year), but not only sends me a vase of paper flowers, but calls me for my 45th?  Maybe she feels guilty.  I doubt it.  My birthmother gets something up her ass and she will do something for no apparent reason, but then never do it again.

OMFG.  The call wasn't even for me.  It was for my mother.  From her old BFF who always thinks my number is my mom's number, calling to tell her happy belated birthday.  Yeah, I didn't think my own birthmother would take time out of her busy days of being retired to give me a call.  She didn't even contact me during the pandemic to see if I was okay.  She never calls me.  She texted me once.  To send me pics of her on vacation in another country.  I had no idea what the pics even were, as I had no idea she was on vacation, as we hadn't talked in a year or more.  Just pictures in my text messages of random nature scenes...so I wrote back "what are these?"  She's all like "Oh em gee!  I am on vacation!!"  I was like "yay for you" (I didn't actually say that).  But that was the last I heard from her in probably another year.  She never writes to me.  Never calls me.  But then out of the blue will do something sporadic and act like it's perfectly normal.  So out of touch with reality she is.  

So, I'm going to go read more Hallmark cards, because I am bored and waiting for my hubby to wake up.  And because I just want to see proof that she's a fraud.  I mean, I already know she is.  But still.  

And I need to go mow the lawn, too.  Yay.  

UPDATE: the battery died and I couldn't finish mowing.  AGAIN.  LOL

Anyways, I also could not find the card she knicked hers off of.  Which is fine.  In all honest, it doesn't matter.  She never calls me or contacts me or has anything to do with me and only does when she wants to brag about something she's done or is doing.  After so many years of that, I stopped answering her messages when she asked to see me when she came up here to visit her family.  "I will be up there, can we meet up?"  Sometimes I would make an excuse and other times I'd just ignore her.  Because every time I'd say yes, she'd never show up.  And I was tired of being let down.  And I was tired of her having the upper hand.  The first time I said no, I made up some fake family member that didn't exist and said we were going to their wedding that weekend.  The next time, I just plain didn't respond.  

It's so odd.  The last time I saw my whole birthfamily was several years ago and my uncle ran out and hugged like he'd missed me so much.  But then he never once contacted me on Facebook (even though he talked to my birthmother on there all the time) and stopped sending me Christmas cards (even though I sent him cards).  I really fucking hate mixed signals.  

So here is her card.  And I am telling you, no normal human talks like this.  It's straight up Hallmark.  

Happy Birthday Shay!

45 years ago this little tiny human appeared in the world.  
Now a mother yourself, you created a family, a home, a
place to be, a place to live, a place to love.  

I am so proud of who you are, and hope that your 
creative spirit continues to inspire us all.  

Love, 

'Ol Ironed Hair (her name in my memoir)

Yeah.  It's just....odd.  Again, if it was a card, it would be cute.  But it's a personal message she wrote into the space on the website, most likely copy and pasted from somewhere that I cannot find.  Not a single personal thing to say.  

Oh well, I shouldn't be so picky, right?  At least she remembered this time LOL