3/17/2019 3 Comments 41 One Years On EarthThere's been a small unopened box on my desk for 2 years. It's 5x7 inches. The bright colors against the white background has been designed to illicit visual excitement. But I learned as a child that the brighter something is packaged, the more poisonous it is. Alarm bells scream in my brain and the package remains. Untouched. Harmless. When I think about opening it now, my panic pushes it further back into my mind. Why isn’t it thrown away, or locked in a drawer so I can’t see it? Because, just like being an adopted child, I will always be acutely aware of its presence in the world. That as much as I push it away, it lays silently in the chambers of who I am. This brightly colored box torments me even more before my adoption day. This day we celebrate the day my parents brought me home as a 7 day old baby. An unwanted child became wanted. All the secrets of my background would be sealed behind paperwork and country. It wasn't until my recent memory that DNA went mainstream. What if I suddenly know who I am with a quick gift of DNA into a tube? There. Is. The. Paradox. I have built the person I am around the unanswered questions of my life. I know this person. I was a lone passenger who suddenly appeared into thin air. Like a made up character in book. This character has learned to only hold a few people close to her in her life. Because she as much as she is strong, she is intensively sensitive. She can be so hurt by the world around her. How differently people behave than way she thinks they should. It can be debilitating. Her sense of honor and justice can illicit rage when she feels betrayed. She takes a long time to heal from it. Luckily she has had fearless guides that loved their way into to the heart of this rage filled child long ago. They held her. They supported her. They have given her a soft true heart that she hides beneath her armor. She needs this protected heart. She knows firsthand that some people will abuse their knowledge of adopted adult’s insecurities. Play to into their loss at birth. They will sneak and hide their demons passing the blame onto the broken parts of the child. They will try to weigh down her heart with the suffocating responsibility for their own happiness. The words and affection from these people have tried to smother the part of her that is rational. Carrying the load of their dreams and hopes, she almost forgets about hers. She becomes a reflection for their needs. But her parents have built her to be strong and sure of herself and it doesn’t take long for her eyes to be opened to these people. She is armed with more knowledge of how her brain and heart fight each other every passing year. She knows this world is so full of beauty, but she can never let herself surrender to the demands of others. She also can not close down her heart. She knows there has to be a place in between the two that she can live. She will continue to dig deep and try to coax her heart into letting the people that will hold and protect it in. It terrifies her. So that must mean it’s worth it. But what if this box disrupts some the carefully built walls she has made to protect it? A stranger’s DNA could bring an impact into her life she’s not ready for. After all, the person she’s grown into for 41 years, is all she knows. And this family is all she can see when she looks at herself. How can she contemplate opening her world? Maybe she’s worried for nothing, maybe it will settle some part of her. Fill some void that she’s unaware of. Her father often tells the story of his own heart growing when they brought home her little sister. That we don’t split ourselves. Our love simply grows. So maybe the box will open her heart to more? Or bring other people to see herself reflected back in. Maybe it holds the answers to questions that have burned into her. Could knowing something instead of nothing help, or torment her with all that stills lays unsolved? She hears everyone’s casual tone when they send away their DNA. Their excitement when the test returns. It feels like quicksand to her. What if she steps in and can never get out again? I sit quietly on the eve of my adoption day. Looking over the abyss of my past. Trying to catch a closer look at memories I can’t control the outcome of. I fight the weight of what might have been. Who I might have been. But I get to be me. Now. Right here. I have to cut the tether of a life already led. A beautifully gut wrenching life. Filled to the brim with uncomfortable truths about myself and others. I have to forgive myself for the parts I’ve played. And I have to forgive others for being the only kind of people they knew how to be. My year ahead shines like the people who fill my days with so much happiness. Who guard my heart with me. They hold the mirror up to me and show me that we are standing side by side equally reflected back. I am so thankful for all of it. So, someday if I decide to send my DNA off, I know I have my axis of people to keep their love intertwined around me. Mom and Dad. I don't know how to express the gift that you have given me. You loved me instantly and fully at first sight. Your love never wavered even when I would tear through the house like caged animal daring you not to love me. When I screamed the most hurtful things to try and force your hand, you took deep breaths and walked away to give me the space I needed to find my center and back to the softness of my heart. You have taught me what love is. Having this beautiful world that you have made for me is never taken for granted. I guard your hearts in my heart, because my heart is yours. To my sister who is so very different than me, but somehow exactly the same, thank you. Thank you for sitting in the dark with me holding my hand when I was scared of things that go bump in the night. I'm sorry for the times I was raging and it scared you, I was fighting my own demons. My family unit is my soul and I live in the light of your lives daily. And thank you to all of you reading this and being a part of my last year. For every laugh or tear shed with you is cherished. Life is brief. Live it fully. And I can not wait to see what 41 looks like. I love you.
3 Comments
Dana
3/17/2019 04:50:36 pm
Beautifully written. You are so loved by your family. Love just naturally oozes from them all! You come from good people and strong women in the family. Your Dad is a little crazy but that's ok!!! Your thoughts are the same that I've had when I think about Lily maybe one day deciding to do the DNA thing. I hope and pray that if she does that it doesn't hurt her because that would kill me. You girls are so very precious to us all.Happy Adoption Day!
Reply
Mary
3/17/2019 06:45:30 pm
Happy adoption day...
Reply
Katharine
3/19/2019 12:41:57 am
Thanks for sharing this precious element Ceiba. Like you, it's incandescent. I wish your year ahead to be so special blessing.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
|