Friday, June 17, 2011

The Other Side Of The Fog

I had taken a break from blogging for several weeks...and came back to find this opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings with many wonderful women who I look up to and who also inspire me with their spirits and their writing.  I just hope I can do this blog justice.  Forgive my gratuitous usage of ellipses...I've tried to curb my enthusiasm for them...but they've become part of my writing style.

I was in the fog for many years.  The fog was a place that I felt safe in.  Yes, I knew I was adopted...but I had grown up knowing I should be grateful for being taken in and saved from the unknown horrors of being raised by a single teenaged girl.  Yes, I was abused...but I deserved it for not being good enough.  Yes, I felt abandoned...but at least someone had wanted me, right?

And then, there I was in June 2008 right after my birthday had passed, minding my own business..dealing with some ugly issues with my son's father online when I received a message..THE message..in my Myspace's Truth Box. 

I believe we met, briefly, 34 years ago.
Because of the issues I'd been having with my son's father, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he or his wife had left the cryptic message.  And because I sometimes can't control my inner filter, I posted a scathing message to the anonymous author.  A day later, my ex emailed me, asking what I was talking about on my Myspace page.  He swore that it hadn't been him, nor did he believe it was his wife.

I chalked it up to nonsense and brushed the whole thing off.

Until a week later, July 11.  I was at work, sitting in my 8 x 8 cubicle, looking at Myspace on a quick break.  I had a message.

Dear Christina, I think I've gone about this all wrong...
It was from a woman who said she felt horrible for leaving me the message on my Truth Box.  That she hadn't known what else to do.  She had come across my profile and felt like she had to write me.  Her daughter was born on June 19, 1974.  She'd given the child up for adoption and then gave the name of the agency she'd placed the child with, as well as the town that she was born in.

She didn't want to disrupt my life if I was that child...but, could it be that I was that daughter?

I read the email twice...and then shut my phone off.  And sat there...and then went back to work. 

I responded that night...and told her she'd have to forgive me for being skeptical but could she give me any other information so I knew this wasn't a joke?  Honestly, I still firmly believed that somehow my ex had found out my information (he'd hacked my email before) and was using it to get to me.

She emailed back almost right away and said she wasn't supposed to have the information she was about to share, but hoped it would help ease my fears.  Then she listed my adoptive mother's name, including her maiden name...her place of birth...my adoptive father's name..his place of birth...and she knew their home address, where I was taken after I was picked up from the agency.

It was in that moment that the fog lifted began to lift.