Shaped by Desire

When I was growing up I was placed on a path.  That path was somewhat disguised, well enough that I wasn’t always aware of it, but it was always there.  It was a pretty simple path.  It went like this: Go to school, graduate, attend a 4-year university, graduate with a degree that will get you a job, get a job that is respectable enough to be a career, get married, provide grandchildren. 

None of those items were open to debate.  I was free to choose a career, but I was expected to choose one.  I was expected to attend a four year university right after high school.  I don’t recall ever having a conversation about this; it was just something that was understood.  I didn’t have any other option.  The problem was I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I was so adrift emotionally by the end of high school that I knew it was a huge mistake to try and go off to a four year university without any real plan or direction.  I also understood that nothing I could say about that would change the plan, so I went.  As expected, it didn’t turn out so well. 

My parents had a plan for their child and I was expected to follow it.  I was, after all, the only child they had.  There was no chance for a do over; I had to be the perfect kid to carry on the line.  There was only one problem with that.  I wasn’t their child.  I was the stand in they had to settle for when their dreams of having their own child didn’t work out.  I tried very hard to shove myself into the role they wanted me in, but like the proverbial square peg trying to fill the round hole, I never fit. 

When I failed to deliver; and that happened a lot, my mother always got very mad at me.  I doubt she ever considered that what she wanted from me simply went against my nature.  It wasn’t ever about me; it was always about what I could do for her.  I tried very hard to be who she wanted.  In doing so I both failed to be who she wanted and failed to be who I really was.  I simply could not be her child; I was always going to be a stand in.  I was intended for another family where I did fit.  Unfortunately for me elements of that family didn’t want me.  So, I ended up where I was trying very hard to be a child that would never exist and as a consequence never learning who I was either.

By the time I reached my mid 30’s I had been divorced twice and failed to produce even a single grandchild for my mother.  I could tell that I was seriously disappointing her as the comments about her lack of grandchildren became more and more frequent.  Never once did she express any concern to me about how I might be feeling about being in my mid 30’s, twice divorced, and not having any children.  It was all about her and how she felt.

When I was sixteen my mother was an office manager for a couple of psychologists and a clinical social worker.  She told me in May or so after my sixteenth birthday that she thought I would benefit from talking to someone and she set up a series of appointments for me to meet with the social worker in her office.  It was extremely awkward going to my mother’s office to meet with this person, especially since I knew that the social worker was free to discuss whatever we talked about with my mother since I was a minor.  Of course how I felt about the situation wasn’t a concern to my mother, how I felt about any situation wasn’t a concern to my mother. 

Once these appointments started it rapidly became obvious to me that the reason for them was to determine if I liked girls or not.  I suppose that I was old enough at sixteen that my mother expected me to have a girlfriend and the fact that I didn’t meant that there was something “wrong” with me.  If I turned out to be gay or something then I couldn’t produce the required grandchildren and that would not be acceptable.  I assured the social worker I did in fact like girls; I was just absolutely terrified of them.  I was asked a lot of prying questions about which specific girls I liked, what I liked about them, what I thought I might do to attract their attention.  It was pretty clear to me the questions were intended to verify I was being honest and wasn’t just making a claim I couldn’t support with details. 

The other thing the social worker wanted to talk about and kept bringing up was my adoption.  This was of course during the time that I believed that my adoption had no effect on me.  However, I often wonder now how my life would be different if I could have really explored the issue back when I was sixteen.  I knew that questioning anything about my adoption, wondering about my natural family, questioning whether my adoptive parents were my “real parents” or not, or anything else related to the adoption that was anything other than in complete support of my mother was off limits.  That was not a discussion I was prepared to have with a person that worked with my mother.  If my mother was actually concerned about my wellbeing and not how my behavior affected her she would have found me someone to talk to that I could trust not to reveal what we talked about.  Perhaps then things would have been different.  Again, it wasn’t about me, it was never about me, so how it made me feel didn’t matter.

It wasn’t until I got in contact with my mom that I realized the impact my adoption had on my life.  Thinking back, there were signs and I really wish I had noticed them.  The visits to the social worker were one of the signs.  Another came many years later, pretty recently, about a year before my mom and I found each other.

My wife and I had been talking about having another child, but we really wanted a girl.  Of course with the traditional method there is no way to get what you hope for, you just take what you get.  My mother suggested we adopt a baby girl.  She even offered to help with the associated expenses.  We came up with all sorts of reasons why adoption wasn’t feasible for us, they were all even true.  However, inside I had a very visceral reaction that was “I cannot do that to someone”.  For someone who claimed to have no problem with either being adopted or adoption in general that is a very unusual reaction.  Too bad I didn’t explore it further.   

I wonder how my life would have been different if I had been allowed to be me instead of the replacement for the never to be biological child.