of elephants, ownership and decisions

Some might say that some of my biggest mistakes in life have been directed by “others”. Had my family been less a mess, had the people I chose as friends been less manipulative, had my teachers been supportive…had my counselors been attentive….etc etc…

I don’t believe that.

I believe that I own everything that’s happened to me. I made choices…I moved on, sometimes kicking and screaming…but I moved on.

In retrospect I can look at the things I’ve done and that have been “done” to me from a position of ownership. I can clearly and without reservation state that I fucked up sometimes and I’m lucky it didn’t kill me.

Because I own it…

I believe that when you make a mistake you take ownership of it, and in doing so you are more than half way finished with it and can then rebuild your credibility.

I believe that the largest deterrent to taking ownership of my mistakes is my inability to swallow my lion’s sized pride…but once I do so I can overcome just about any error in my life.

One single “OMG I fucked up” goes a long long way towards forgiveness and moving on. Acknowledgement and compassion.

Not pointing the finger at others, not trying to sweep a mistake under the carpet and not blaming others…that’s how to fix a mistake.

Because in the end…the truth will always come back and bite you in the ass.

So….Thirty four years ago I made an adult decision.

I was at the time, lost on more levels than I can begin to describe. I’d lost my soul mate, and virtually everything we’d built together….and I was pregnant.

I had a daughter, and I gave her up for adoption.

I never saw her and my thoughts of her (almost daily over the years) were of the hopes and dreams I had for her to have a good life, a productive life, a happy life with a real family.

I did not absolve myself of the guilt of giving her up…because there was no guilt relating to having made the right decision.

Over the years I have examined that decision in its minutia and I still, today, feel as resolved as I began to that correctness. If anything I am even more so now than I was that day 34 years ago.

I also vowed very early on that I would not go looking for her because I wasn’t gonna be one o them waste o skin and oxygen types you see on Jerry Springer all the time.

Right this moment I think I "know" where my daughter is. Finding her was not a decision I made. It was inadvertently made for me by someone who professes to love me.

I’ve spent the last several days thoroughly examining my feelings around this event (and I’ve spent some serious time with my therapist – ya I’ve got one…it’s been nobody’s business to know)

I know that I still feel right around my decision to not be in contact with my daughter. That may yet change, but for today, I’m leaving things as they are. And no amount of condescension or patronization is going to make me change my mind…as long as I still feel that it’s the right decision.

My biggest problem right now is not even my problem really.

My biggest problem is to decide how and what I am going to do with the breach of trust and personal boundaries by one who tells me that she loves me as a sister.

How do I get back to a position of trust with someone who is so busy telling me that she did no wrong when I tell her that she’s inadvertently dealt me this blow? Because make no mistake...there was a blow and in rocked my world...whether she meant to or not.

If she had just said…”I fucked up and I’m sorry” this too would pass.

But instead I’m treated, at a time when my world has been rocked to the very core, by diatribes about how I don’t know her, and she’s not at fault, and I’m wrong…

Yes I got an apology of sorts…one of those “I’m sorry you hurt yourself on what I did”. It wasn’t about owning up, and accepting responsibility. It was about absolving herself of any wrongdoing, real or imagined.

That doesn’t currently work for me…it may never work for me.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t need people to be right with myself. Turns out I’m alright by myself.

It also it turns out that she is right in that I “don’t know her at all”. Because the person I believed I knew would walk through glass for me as I her….that person would want to spend her breath supporting me and being my friend holding my hand during one of the most emotional times of my adult life…not defending herself…that person believed in sisterhood.

...and no....I ain't gonna tell you who it is...so don't ask!