Despite having been on a downer since Christmas I am getting back into a routine for keeping busy. It is the only way I can avoid thinking ... dwelling ... about adoption 24/7. Mondays are usually a quiet day unless we are asked to help out at the church. Tuesdays and Thursdays we volunteer for the credit union. Wednesdays we help with cleaning the back hall, office, rooms and kitchen. Fridays I help with the lunch club and Rick is a 'floater' so generally splits his time between the lunch club and the office. Saturday is the only day we make sure we keep for ourselves and Sundays we are usually at church twice but if the weather is bad we generally just go in the evening. Rick is also part of the choir but choir practise doesn't start till February.
This afternoon I was exhausted as we got to the back hall at 9.30 am so we got the chairs and tables out, I cleaned the kitchen sides and started getting out things that I could get to. Some of the cupboards are locked when the kitchen isn't being used. Rick spent a couple of hours in the office then went hoe because he wasn't feeling too well. It was a good morning though and I never thought I would enjoy helping with a lunch club so much. The people who come along are elderly and do so because they enjoy the company as much as anything.
I needed the distraction. Yesterday I showed a couple of ladies who volunteer for the community bus and a;so go to church pictures of our pets. It was easier showing them the pictures on Facebook than going through folders but then I got awkward questions as they spotted one of me and my son. They don't know he was adopted and I really wasn't in the mood to explain. It was one of those times that I was glad that he lives at the other end of the country to us. This was good enough reason to explain why I don't see him and use my favourite line that he only gets in touch when it suits him or he wants something.
I don't expect to ever hear from him again but I wasn't going to tell them that as it's too painful to talk about. I wont even talk about it with Rick either. Knowing that he believes I am not good enough for him is the most hurtful thing he could come out with last year. Every time I thinks about that it's as if someone is twisting a knife in my stomach and I want to cry. I wish I knew what I had one to deserve that. People don't understand the pain that adoption causes. They believe that mothers like me deserve what we get from our surrendered children. They don't 'get it' that usually we don't. Whenever I was in the wrong with my son I would apologise but he would never admit to being in the wrong. There were a number of times I would be told by good internet friends that they believed he was a narcissist (sp) which included another natural mother who had originally sided with him when we first started falling out. Her turning point was when he moved in with us and she found out how much he was disrespecting us just on ground rules without realising how bad his behaviour could be.
Despite every thing I still love my son and I just don't like his behaviour. A number of times I have been told that if I loved him unconditionally then it wouldn't bother me. I still believe a parent can love a child unconditionally but still get fed up with bad behaviour. I am only human at the end of the day.
