A brand new end

I am not a huge John Mayer fan, but I am a huge fan of music. No matter the mood, be it happy, sad, mad or glad, I can find a song that fits. With that said, I have loved the lyrics to his song, "Say". It has been one of the many anthems in my "re"reunion. One of my favorite verses from the song is, "Have no fear for giving in. Have no fear for giving over. You better know that in the end, it's better to say too much than never to say what you need to say again." I have always had a problem expressing my feelings to others. I grew up in a home that didn't really allow for that, so I don't know if it's a learned behavior or if it's just my personality. My guess is a little of both. Whatever the cause, it is a huge struggle of mine.

After the funeral, I more or less was prepared for my birth mom to slowly drift back out of my life. However, that did not happen. It was actually the complete opposite. She would call me about every other night. We would talk for quite a while, sometimes a couple of hours or more, about anything and everything. We talked about us a lot. She was a lot more forthcoming about her emotions. She talked repeatedly about feeling so guilty for giving me up, but she never really addressed the years of silence. Judging by some of the things she said in our conversations, I could piece together different reasons, but I really needed to hear from her what happened. I didn't want to guess, I wanted to know. Every conversation we had, I wondered if it was the last one for a while. I was tired of living with that fear that she was going to walk out of my life again.

As much as I wanted to just come out and ask her, I was afraid of how she would respond. Would it make her mad? Would she tell me I was being selfish just thinking of myself after her mom just died tragically? Would she hang up on me and never call again? Regardless of my fears, I had to know. I didn't want another conversation to go by without finding out what happened. I didn't want to make the same mistakes again. So, I finally got the nerves to say what I needed to say. Finally.

When I asked her what happened she took a deep breath, followed by another one, and then there was a long pause on the phone. I asked her if she was OK, and she said yes. I could tell she was crying. I quietly started crying as she explained. It basically was all the things I had assumed. Her husband did not know about me and when she told him, he was very upset. Not so much about me, but the fact that my biological father was who he was...a black man. (I guess some things never change.) He gave her a very hard time about that. She also said that she had an overwhelming amount of guilt and sadness about not being there for me. That she gave me away and let total strangers raise me. The fact that she missed it all. She said it was, and still is, very overwhelming.

So, I asked her if all of that was the cause, how was I to believe that things would be better this time around? The feelings were still there, why did she think she could "handle it" now? Again, long pause, deep breaths, lots of tears, followed with another explanation. She told me that she knew she was wrong. She was so disappointed in herself for how she handled our relationship and even during the time she was not talking to me, she thought about me every single day. She said my entire life, a day never went by where she did not think about me several times. She said that losing her mom was a huge wake-up call for her because it happened so quickly and without warning. She did not want something to happen to me and for me to not know how much I meant to her and how much she loved me and always has.

My birth mom and I are alike in so many ways it is often freaky. I don't know how many times I have wondered how you can be so much like a person you spent the majority of your informative years away from. Our similarities are good and bad. One of the bad ones is our lack to truly express how we're feeling. This time around, we have talked about this particular flaw and have vowed to share our feelings with each other and not hold anything back. So far, it has gone very well. I love sharing my life with her. I think we both have our moments where we think about what could have been. Those times are sad, but I'm trying my hardest to move beyond the past. I think my birth mom said it best. She said that no one can go back and make a brand new start, but anyone can start from now and make a brand new end. I'm really counting on it.