I was adopted at 1 1/2 years old in the late 70's.  I used to identify with that word so much, "adopted", as though it described my situation perfectly.  Like, if you tell someone you're adopted, the first thing someone will say (or think) is "Oh wow, your birthmother is so selfless!"  Images of a tearful heartbroken young girl giving her newborn baby away to parents who can afford to take care of it will conjure up in that person's mind.  Because that's the story we're all told that adoption is.  Young mothers doing what's right for their babies, even though it hurts them to do so.  

My birthmother was twenty years old.  Okay, wait, hold up, let's rewind.  I call her my "birthmother", but again, that puts a clear idea of what she was in the mind of the person who doesn't know what happened.  And that's just not right.  That idea of what a birthmother is is not what mine was.  She's not my birthmother.  She was my actual mother, who took care of me for six entire months before decided she hated being a mom and just abandoned me with strangers.  Right before Christmas of that year, too (must have been a fun holiday).  Yes, I am aware that's a very negative and simplistic view of what happened to me as a baby, but it's the truth.  You can boil down exactly what happened to just that.  She even told me once "I have more connection with animals then I do humans".  I mean, at least she admits it.  Not only that, I was living with my entire family who loved me, not just her.  I had my grandmother, my aunt, and two uncles, too.  I was six months old, and because of her selfishness, I was given to strangers.  

Now, to be 100% fair here, my narcissistic grandmother did throw her out.  Though she did tell my birthmother to leave me there.  But rather than either leaving me with the people who loved me or taking me with her, she decided to just give me to the state.  She decided if my aunt and grandmother weren't there to take care of me (which they both did, because she refused to), and if she wasn't going to be in charge of the situation, then she was going to do what was best for her, not me.  What was best for her was to get back at my grandmother for throwing her out by getting rid of me.  What was best for me was to leave me with my actual caretakers, my actual family.  My grandmother (albeit, a narcissist--though it wasn't until recently that my birthmother has finally accepted that fact) even fought her in court to get custody of me when she heard of her giving me away to foster parents.  My family wanted me.  But the courts decided to do what's best for my mother and let her give me away.  

Yes, I know that growing up with my grandmother wouldn't have been easy, but would it had been worse than watching my father beat my mother in drunken rages and my mother narcissistically abusing me my entire life?  I mean, both families would have sucked, but I can't say that leaving me with my natural family would have been worse.  

Anyways, that's why I don't like calling her my birthmother or identifying with the word "adopted".  I wasn't given up at birth by a teenage or unprepared mother.  My mother was the same age I was when I gave birth to my oldest son and she lived with a whole support system to help take care of me (whereas I didn't have one at age twenty).  But then I was literally ripped from the only home I knew as an almost toddler and thrusted into a family of strangers every six months for the next year (three times, in fact).  Oh, and by the way, she didn't abort me because her boyfriend decided to stay with her.  She wanted to be with him and thought I was the way to do that (she had cheated on him with his best friend and didn't know who the father was).  But then he left her, so she no longer wanted me.  So, if she would have kept me, I would have never been her top priority.  Whichever man she was with would have been.  

So, I met her when I was in my early twenties.  She was cold towards me.  I didn't know what to make of her as I am a very warm and loving person.  My aunt was nice, as were my cousins and my grandma and uncle, which made me feel welcome (even if my birthmother didn't).  Everything was weird back then.  But as time went on, we got to know each other more and even went to visit her for a week back in 2009 or so (which was four days too long--for her, she was very irritated with having us around and even got snippy with me).  

Years went, by she was sending Christmas boxes to us and the kids each year for a few years.  Then one day, everything stopped.  No more phone calls.  No more letters.  No more holiday boxes or even cards.  Nothing.  She got tired of keeping up the façade of me and my family being her family.  I thought we were on our way towards actually being family again, but things started getting weird.  Sporadically she'd send letters.  Some years she'd send us Christmas stuff, but normally she forgot.  She forgot my 40th birthday.  In fact, she forgot most of my birthdays.  She would forget to contact me for years.  Then out of the blue text me photos of some godforsaken place.  "Where is this?" I would ask.  "I am on vacation!" she'd reply.  As though years hadn't gone by without a word from her.  During the pandemic she didn't contact me once.  I eventually broke down and wrote to her to check on her.  "Oh, I was just going to message you!"  Sure you were.  Now she's moving up here, to be closer to her mother, and she's all up my ass about it.  

In 2020 or 2021 I sent her a Christmas card (she didn't send us one--she hardly ever does) and it had my blog's email address on it.  The blog was about our new house and how everything was going here.  She never sent me back a card or responded, but I saw she did go look at all my blog posts (and didn't write anything on them).  By the way, you can use StatCounter to do that--check to see who's on your blogs/websites.  Anyways, I saw that, waited a week, still nothing from her, I got so fucking mad that I turned off my blog to anyone who wasn't me.  The idea of the blog was NOT to replace having contact with us, it was to add to it.  

In 2017 or 2018, she got on my Facebook and donated money to the charity I was raising money for for my birthday, but she didn't even send me a card.  I'm like, you can spend on money on something adjacent to my birthday, but you can't even buy me a card?  When she did send me a paper floral bouquet for my birthday another year later, she copied a card she saw as my message.  She's done this before, handmade me a card (when she'd get a hair up her ass to do so) and then copy some other card's sentiment and pass it off as her own.  Sigh.  Never a nice message me made herself.  

Back in 2015 or so, she wrote to me on social media and said "Your posts are too negative!  I see you spiraling down into a negative space and you'd better be careful otherwise you'll stay that way!  I need to unfollow you because I can't handle what you post."  Sigh.  Another time on social media she saw me post about a pic we took right before we became homeless in 2018 and how the pic gave me a stomachache knowing was going to happen next.  So, she responded with "But everything turned out fine".  She said more than that, but that was the gist.  So, I gave it some time and put her on restricted.  And then eventually I blocked her (though a few years later).  Our only form of contact now is email.  

And again, she only contacts me when SHE has nothing going on in her life.  That's it.  I am not her family, she does not see me as so.  Which is fine, but she has me listed as her daughter on all her online stuff, which irks me.  But I ignore it.  Let her life her fantasy of portraying to others she's a mom.  But I know the truth.  And so does she.  

Anyways, I am a talker.  If you read my blog posts, you know this.  And she will write huge long emails to me, so I will respond in the same fashion.  But while I try to respond to her words, she ignores most of the things I say to her and only answers back to the easy stuff, and nothing ever about anything personal.  But one thing she has done consistently is to ignore my invitations to have the "BIG" conversations with me.  Like, the fact that I grew up with extreme abuse.  And the fact that SHE is the reason for that happening (her choices--you'd think most birthmothers would feel guilty for that).  And she never asks me how I feel about being adopted.  When I first met her, I wrote her a poem about how grateful I was for the choices she made, because I then had a child I wouldn't have had otherwise.  She just said "thanks" in a flat tone and put the poem away.  It was so odd.  But this time, she's done it again.  She was complaining about her friend having panic attacks and I said that I lived with "debilitating anxiety" and she didn't say one freaking word about that back to me.  

So, I have found a new way of responding to her emails from now on.  No more information about myself.  No more anything personal and no more anything from my perspective whatsoever.  From now on, my responses are short, curt, and supportive.  Like her tone-deaf email about how much her vacation sucked in Nova Scotia recently because of the fires, the weather, and her friend's panic attacks.  I should have written this "I am so sorry you had such a bad time.  Though I glad you got home safe."  That should have been it.  But that was when I wrote back my long-winded email about her friend and her panic attacks and how my anxiety is insanely bad.  Her email back was also long, but again, it was all about her.  So, I wrote back my short, curt, and supportive email.   Just like four lines and that was it.  And from now on, that's what I am writing to her.  I send her birthday cards each year, and Christmas cards, so show I am more stable than her (ha!) with my thoughts of her.  But I never get one.  Or, I get some half-ass half-baked apology "Sorry, I haven't sent out any cards this year!"  Bitch, I only send out only TWO holiday cards each year: one for you, and one for your mother.  And two birthday cards: one for you, one for your mother.  That's it.  So that's not a freaking excuse. 

She carried me in her body for nine months.  Then she kept me for six more.  You'd think she'd damn well remember my birthdays or the fact that I exist.  If I gave up a baby as a young woman and that child wanted to have me in their life as an adult?  I'd be sending them cards every single birthday and holiday and annoying them with emails and texts until they told me to stop! LOL  (just kidding, I'd respect their boundaries).  But that's the thing: I'd ask them what their boundaries were.  I'd care enough to.  I'd feel so horrible that I gave them up that I'd do anything to be in their life, as much or as little as they'd want me to.  But no my birthmother.  It's 100% about her.  It always has been.  

And it makes me wonder: her mother and brother and sister are all narcissists.  Is she, too?  What does she say about me behind my back?  What does she truly think of me?  I don't know.  Which is why from day this forward, only short, curt, and supportive emails back to her.  Because I cannot trust her.  Not with my emotions.  Not with my love (which, at one point, I was going to ask her to adopt me back).  Not with my anything.  I can't trust her to treat me the way she should treat me.  And I can't trust her to respond correctly if I were to bring it up to her.  I think this is for the best.  Keep her arm's length.  

She almost chose a house 45 min away from me and that scared the crap out of me.  But now she'll be two hours away, thank goodness.  I mean, that's still too close, but it's far enough she probably won't make the trek up here.  

Oh, she also used to come up and visit her family and never visit me (or ask me to visit her).  She lives twelves hours away her family is two hours away.  So one year, she sprung it on me at the last minute and rather than just say no, I lied and said we'd be out of town that weekend at a fictional family member's house.  I didn't want to say no to visit my family and then have her come up here, so I had to say we'd be gone out of town.  It was kind of funny.  She has a hard time thinking outside of herself and her own experiences.  So, having a relationship with her is so tricky.  

But for now, that's my plan.  I don't take her behavior personally, but it really sucks to grow up with a shitty mother, only to have a second chance at having a real mother, and to find out she's not much better.  I mean, don't get me wrong, she's better, but not in the ways I need her to be.  And that's on me.  I guess I am my own mother.  Just like I always have been and always would have been.  It sucks when you find out you didn't miss anything by being adopted.  Just another family who doesn't care much about you.  But again--I don't take it personally.  They all have their own demons to fight.  I just can't rely on them to care that I have my own to fight, too.  Sigh.