Lack of Communication

I think the hardest thing about being adopted and knowing that you’ve found your biological family is when the communication stops. When someone acts like they’re truly interested in hearing from you and getting to know you, but then the emails just mysteriously end, it’s a hard thing to digest.

I found my biological mother in April of last year, and we emailed back and forth for several weeks. The emails slowly subsided, but I got a birthday email last August. I responded, but after that email, I haven’t heard a single thing from her. It’s not like I haven’t tried to contact her. I’ve emailed occasionally, and when I went to Alaska this summer, I hoped that telling her about that trip would inspire her to finally get back to me. I was wrong.

For me, I think it’s been harder having that communication just stop, than for her to have told me she didn’t want to hear from me. When I was 18 and read the line in her letter to me that said she hoped I want to meet her one day, I’ve held out hope that there would be a possibility for some sort of relationship. I’m not looking for another mother or for her to treat me like her daughter. I have a family, and I know she’s got a family of her own. More than anything, I just want a friendship with her. I don’t want to intrude on the entire family I know exists out there and demand that they make me a part of their life, but I do want to feel some sort of friendship and be able to write or call without feeling all panicky just typing out a few words.

That’s one of the hardest parts of being an adopted child- feeling caught in limbo. I’m not a child of divorce, but I had to deal with enough fights growing up to know what that balancing act can feel like. The adopted balancing act is a bit different because both parties aren’t always trying to win your affection. There’s one party that wants to make sure they don’t lose you, and can sometimes feel somewhat insecure that you might decide you prefer your biological family to the one they created for you. Then there’s the other party that you want to make sure you aren’t intruding on because their lives went on without you and they’ve adjusted. It’s more of an internal struggle trying to decide between what you want and what you know you should do to keep everyone else happy more than anything else.

Part of me tends to feel forgotten. I held on to the fact that I had a birth mother who wanted to get to know me for six years, but then after I finally found her, she dropped all communication. With my people-pleasing tendencies, I’m constantly going over the few messages I’ve sent in the past year, wondering if there was something I might have said to make her change her mind- to make her not want to talk to me anymore. There’s also my birth father to take into account, who knew I existed but wasn’t ready to become a father. I want to at least know his name, but there’s nothing else I can do because I haven’t heard from the one person who knows his information. I catch myself asking if there’s a possibility that he changed his mind and wanted to know who I was at some point. If he had other kids down the road, maybe some sort of paternal nature kicked in and he got curious about me but had no idea where to begin to start looking.

I could go into how these reasons have affected my psyche and the way I connect with the people I meet, but that would be delving even deeper than I think I’m ready to publicly go. More than anything, I want answers. I want to be able to feel comfortable enough to ask questions, and while I know better than to expect an immediate reply, I want to know that I’ll get answers eventually. I try to be understanding and I try to be patient, but it gets so difficult at times knowing that there was something that must have changed her mind. I know there are more than one side to every story, but sometimes I just want her to know mine, so that maybe she’ll know how important communication, however infrequent, is to me.

listening to: Damien Rice