Whimsical Saga

As usual, it started with joy. – It can only really hurt if something joyful is being taken away, am I right? – We got the news: we are going to be parents. Adoptive parents. We have planned, we have waited, and now we are here.

It is the night of the birth. We are in the hospital. It was about midnight. Nobody is around. Quiet. We are waiting. So excited.

We were able to meet her. The little baby. It was surreal. Unimaginable. It was joy.

We couldn’t sleep in the hospital, so we went home and went to bed unsuspectingly. In the morning, a message awaited us. – Call us back, please. – Said the adoption agency.

At the final moment, word came that the biological mother had made a decision to try raising her child.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe a child should grow up with their biological family, even if they might have a rough(er) life. That family still deserves a chance. This fact, however, changed nothing in our reality. We lost our future.

Let me share a tender secret with you. When you are adopting a child, and you are going through pregnancy season, no one really realizes that. We had six months of preparation for becoming a parent. This is for how long we knew we would be parents. But others around you don’t really notice it. Obviously, no stomach is getting bigger to be a constant timer for any stranger (or family) in your life. However, it is very real for you. You are doing the exact same things. Buying clothes, getting furniture, getting the house ready, baby safety, trying to read all those books, etcetera. However, this is somehow not that obvious to others.

So when you lose it, for others, it is almost like it never even was. Or it was only for split second.

They don’t realize that you were getting ready for the rest of your life future for six months and that it was taken away from you in a split second. You lost your future.

In the next season, we learned something painfully true, twisted, and cruel. You will need to deal with your own grief as the person who lost something. There is a normal process of going through your stages at your own pace. However, there is another aspect to this. You need to deal with other people dealing with your grief!

Honestly, that was significantly harder.

We turned into ‘hot potatoes’ for those around us, too hot to handle.

Picture this: you’re pulling potatoes out of the oven or from a campfire. Suddenly, you’re caught off guard by their intense heat. Instinctively, you begin a frantic dance, tossing the potatoes back and forth between your hands, trying to juggle the scalding spuds without getting burned.

Now imagine you are the potatoes, and your grief (let me say that again: YOUR grief) is the intense heat that they can’t juggle. This made us into these weird ghosts. People either didn’t know how to react to us, so they didn’t; or they didn’t know how to react to us, so they tried to solve your problem. I don’t have a problem. I am grieving. If you want to help, grieve with me. Cry with me.

The worst part was the fact that many people didn’t even realize I was grieving. Since they barely realized we were getting ready for parenting, in their eye, not too much changed. So I had to live this ghost life, where I either had to pretend nothing happened, or deal with people who were trying to fix my grief. Well, this made me fairly lonely. But that is okay. You are just going through the most painful season of your life. Loneliness is the best thing to have in this, am I right? [Insert sarcastic grim here.]

I think we got the recipe. Loss + grief + loneliness, plus add some time to the mix and there you go, you got depression. At least I did.

Often unaware in the moment, the world grows heavier. Suddenly, the simplest tasks morph into insurmountable challenges. Anxiety starts creeping in, too. The colors start to fade in life. So much fun.

All this is bound to come to the service somewhere. For me, this was anger.

Honestly, I really hate this. Anger is not something you choose. It chooses you. And controls you. It is not like I would like to be angry. It is not like I like myself when I am angry. The opposite. I hate myself. But under pressure and years of build-up, it just takes over you. By the end, it turns you into someone who you don’t even recognize anymore in the mirror. Someone, you don’t even like.