"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."
Mother Teresa
Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to be loved and I feel like a burden on my friends. This stems from being given away for adoption. I don't think I can handle such a rejection like that ever again if I ever decide to contact my birth mom. Those statements feel irrational to many people I feel like but let me explain.
What happened to me? Why do I feel this way? When I got deported to North Carolina from New York State, I kicked and screamed. I said stuff like can I live with Grandma and my Mom was like, Grandma is done raising kids lol! That's not what Grandma's are for! I understand that now. I moved to the south and it sucked. I can remember some things from moving here, mainly the rough moments that stick out. Like I made friends really fast when I moved here but my career in middle school was tumultuous. I went to Crown Christian when I moved here but I don't really remember it. Then it was Randolph Middle School and that was traumatic for me. I was a target because I was a weird little mixed kid. I wrote about this in a Mixed Bag of Racism. I started out in the regular classes and was moved to the gifted classes. I was made fun of and I'm sure I was obnoxious about it. I was made fun of for being mixed by the kids that looked like me the most. So, I had no one to identify with and also in middle school kids think it's not cool to be smart.
I have dated and have had a few relationships with some pretty awesome and pretty disturbed women. This is about neither of the two types. I don't know, Taylor was pretty awesome and pretty disturbed. I just wanted to touch on my life with her as well as a recent relationship, with Kat but we shall call her Taylor 44.0. I dated Taylor in 2011 and my Facebook memories are surfacing that our relationship is just starting. I wasn't good enough for her at the end of the relationship because all signs pointed in that direction. Her dad was a fortune 500 company flipper. Well, have you read the other entries about me? I am a struggling bipolar, adult male and hardly out of college but making headway. I can't fathom how successful her father was at his job. I clearly would never measure up to his stature. I'm pretty amazing so don't feel bad for me. I have this blog, I'm a published poet, I paint and they aren't like oh my kid is a painter let me put his paintings on the fridge type of art, and I have one associate's degree. On top of that Associate's degree, I have a job in that field that I studied in, Visual Merchandising. I was about to graduate from CPCC around then, in fact, a year later I graduated in Dec 2012. I wanted to marry her but alas I was but a bandaid that wasn't good enough to introduce to her friends yet oddly she hung out with mine a lot. We broke up in November of 2011 and it was messy. I was all kinds of hormonal rage and anguish. I had every right to be all kinds of sorrow filled full of emotions. She spent almost all of her free time with me and my friend or my family. She was introduced to a surgeon and didn't go on a date with him till after we broke up. She had reasons for breaking up with me and I'm hurt by them as well as grateful we aren't together. I was in love with her and I wasn't apart of her world. That hurt more than ever meeting her dad or getting to that approval step.
Taylor 44.0, oh man, I call her this because she treated me like a project sometimes just like Taylor. She's a very successful banking recruiter and has had her share of shitty relationships. I, on the other hand, am probably in her mind was a shitty relationship. I didn't have a corporate job like her and it was very clear that I needed one, so we weren't on the same playing field. Also, I only knew one of her friends and that was because I met her when we first met each other. I was constantly being compared to her kids and how I'm figuring out life much more now than I should have already done. I do not want to be a woman's project or used for intimacy needs. I felt used every time she'd want me back in her life after pushing me away or breaking up with me. I loved her and I probably still do inside. It was a very fun relationship and I loved her kids. I think I've moved on to dating women with kids now because in all semblance of reality is that I may never have my own and I love kids. With her, I felt all these great emotions and some I wish I never felt. I felt anger and a lot of it at the end. When she had been diagnosed with anxiety and had been going to therapy, she turned her therapy on me. She would speak with her therapist about how I was doing then relay information to me about what I should be doing differently or how to help. I go to therapy and a PA psychiatrist and I do not need more advice nor pay someone to remind me to take meds on the daily or tell me that I'm being erratic in conversation or in thought. I am a grown-up who knows that if I do not take my meds, I am endangering myself.
I want that love and intimacy that makes all my other relationships jealous that they ever doubted me or let me go. I want a relationship based on trust and love, with great communication. I convey to every woman I think is relationship material what it would be like to date me and if they want to leave early, there is the door. I can take the early rejection way easier than spending 8 months cultivating a relationship where I have my heart broken and shattered. I want to find a woman who would make my mom proud. I am not a project and I don't need help changing. I have a huge heart and sometimes it gets in the way of commonsense. I'm 37 and I am still learning how to love and create relationships on my own.
I have something to add to close this story out. I recently wrote a letter to my birth mother and sent it to her on Facebook messenger. As far as I know, she hasn't read it and I am praying that she will open it and read it. I want to know more about myself and to me, that means knowing my birth mom. I feel that this is an example of being good enough to be accepted into someone's life that gave me away before birth. That seems like an irrational statement but it's how I feel. I feel that I am trying to sway someone I don't know to think I am good enough. It will forever shape the way I approach obstacles from now on. I hope it finds her and God sways her heart to reach out to me.