Empty Cereal Box

Views From Inside an Adoptee

April 09, 2006

Trenching

While I write this I'm running in and out of my house. First I type, then I run out into the front yard and haul buckets of rocky soil from a trench five people are digging as we get ready to lay pipe to hook up to the sewer.

This old bungalow has been hooked onto a cesspool in the back yard for sixty years. It finally stopped leaching. Plus, California has a water contamination problem. I think I can relate to the bungalow somehow. A lifetime of backed-up feelings.

Always a pattern. I need to write this blog; I also need to please others so that I'm not rejected. So I run in and out, trying to please everyone. But I don't mind the hard, physical labor. I like it, in fact. It's really honest, and it doesn't have that suffocating feeling of working in an office with bosses breathing down my neck.

I'm constantly redoing things, changing things, moving things from there to there. Restless. Unsettled. Take blogs. for example. I must have had half a dozen of them within a few years. I begin to think they're awful, so I delete them. Or I move them to another server.Guess I'm afraid of keeping things as they are. I keep fiddling with things as a coping mechanism for being an adoptee. I think it has to do with a need to control. It's must be strategy I've devised to survive.

For instance, I wonder if my post yesterday on my view that adoption is unconstitutional isn't over the top. I've been reading adoptive mothers' blogs today and I see that they're just as much victims of the system as natural mothers and adoptees are. Duh. It's like digging and digging this endless trench, trying to get to the bottom of this pain. How can adoptees and nmoms break up this hardened cesspool of a government system that could care less about us?

One thing I'm learning here is that, besides being too hard on myself, I take myself way too seriously. I'm missing is the ability to be outrageous and hilarious. I wonder if having these or not is genetic. I think they are a sign of genius. Take Rhonda's Ruminations and the bloggers she links to. They are jaw-dropping hilarious with biting wit. I don't know how to express how much I admire these displays of brilliance. I grew up in a household where brilliant humor was rare to non-existent. I'm told that my my nmom had a terrific sense of humor and sense of fun. Wish I'd known her.

I found a hilarous site last night.Warning: Do not be drinking anything if you follow this End of the World link. You'll laugh it out through your nose like I did.

And then to balance that out with horror, I find something that shows how f'd up this capitalist patriarchal system really is. The crap behind the pretty curtain. Patriarchy at its finest. Remember the game show, The Price is Right? Bob Barker was its host. Something so innocuous. The show still has fansites. But you can check out the really dark side of old Bob Barker. Come on Down!

I think trenching is getting down into the origins of things, both inside myself and outside in the cold, messed up system that has set us up to be owned as slaves, and continue to be slaves even after our adoptive and natural parents have died and finding out the truth can no longer hurt anyone and certainly help the adoptee.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

# Rhonda Says:
April 9th, 2006 at 5:59 pm e

This is my second attempt to post a comment, so if it shows twice, my apologies.

The first comment commiserated with your septic tank disaster. What I didn’t share is my utter jealously you live in my favorite style house - a bungalow. Ah, to dream.

I thank you for your kind words. There isn’t a post I make on my blog that I don’t first consider deleting. The stuff I hope is funny, I am sure isn’t. The stuff that is serious, I am usually convinced comes off as whiney. I can tell you underestimate the brilliance of your writing, so I hope this sinks in a little: I think it’s fabulous.

I also grew up in a humorless household. I combated both my internal and the external anxiety there with sarcasm (and dark, teenaged-angst laden poetry). The sarcasm (which no one ever understood) probably kept me from entirely losing it at family gatherings.

13.4.06  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

# HeatherRainbow Says:
April 9th, 2006 at 6:08 pm e

I think that adoptive parents are victims, in some ways, by society, but not in terms of adoption. Perhaps, because they are not valued unless they have children, perhaps, because they were abused, emotionally traumatized in their lives, or endless other ways that we are all oppressed by the system.

But, in terms of adoption, they are seeking to adopt. They are paying for a nice white little baby to call their own. Whether to save them, to have their own, or to feel good about themselves, it is still ownership of another human’s life. Just my opinion.

13.4.06  
Blogger Marie said...

# emptycerealbox Says:
April 9th, 2006 at 6:33 pm e

Rhonda–Even still,I’m in total awe of your talents.

Heather–Ye..ah, see? There I go wavering again. You’re helping me to find my spine and keep it real around here. Tomorrow I’m gonna to ask the question: Why does adoption exist in the first place? I don’t have an answer, but I’m sure as hell gonna to throw it into the gears, grind it around.

(insert musical note: Oh, la, just gotta spew.)

13.4.06  

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