arrival anniversary - 25

i've been trying to write this one for days now & every time i begin, i stop. physically and mentally, i am exhausted.

can you hold me for a minute? that's all i need. sit with me, please.

every year, i acknowledge this day. i acknowledge the week leading up to it. i go so deeply into myself to hold the 8 month old baby who cried for 18 hours on an airplane filled with strangers. i write these long drawn out reflections and tend to what i couldn't understand 25 years ago & heal a little bit more in the process. i talk about it in therapy. i let my family celebrate it. i take it all out and air it out before neatly packing it back up again. i tell myself it won't always be this way—that i just need to keep working at it until the memory no longer hurts. i'm getting there. 

this year, i am tired. we know what this is. it's nuance and pain and the knife of memory carving deeper into my skin & i am so proud of how far i've come but i am tired. i've been doing the work for years. & now the work is telling me to listen & rest. so let me tell you about where i am. can i tell you about my grief? just for a moment. 

it hits me out of nowhere. i turn off all the lights. it's the sounds of waves crashing. i close my eyes. i let it swallow me. i don't want to remember the images. the images are uncomfortable so i shake my head like an etch a sketch but their ghosts remain. isn't it funny? how does one outgrow a sensation? i suppose you process it. 

i departed & arrived. i was wrapped in a blanket of loss & given to assimilation. oh the ache for a language i struggle to hold on my tongue. i hold a light to the erasure of self & rewriting of stories never told in fullness.

babygirl, they couldn't heal you. you'll do that part yourself later. they held you down & bore into you a promise in the name of love but that's not love, is it?

i'm not saying you weren't loved. they just had a real funny way of showing it.

i can still feel the string you tied around my pinky. i feel it when you tug. i hear you & i promise, i'm not ignoring you. i just can't right now. "compartmentalization" is a word you'll learn later in therapy. i've opened pandora's box. for better or for worse, that's where you live right now.

this feels clunky and awkward. have i mentioned yet how uncomfortable i am? i don't have much else to say this year. i've been in shut down since September. this is, in some small way, also progress.

i center myself today. i give myself the grace & space to let it be what it is. when my body remembers at 2am, after everyone else is asleep, i will hold myself through it & cry the same sacred tears i cried 25 years ago.

adoption is messy. adoption is trauma. adoption isn't inherently evil. adoption is nuanced. adoption is a lifetime of these self-reflections, written in hope that next year's might bring more calm & clarity. adoption is trusting oneself in the discomfort of being, in every step of the process of becoming. 

& so, i'll see you next year.