Thursday, October 3, 2013

What a Ride

I've been a bit MIA lately, something that my fellow Lost Daughters have been super understanding about (because they are amazing ladies).  You see, I got married a week and a half ago.  And I’m buying a house this week.  Yes, we're that crazy that we decided to do the big wedding thing AND buy our first home all at the same time.  We're nuts.  It was crazy, stressful, and a huge time suck.  But we made it (or we're pretty close to making it at this point).  So there’s that.  I have lots of fun updates and fun things to write about now.  So many things!

For my first post back, I've decided to do a brief review of how I got here.  We can't move forward until we know where we've been right? 

I was adopted at a few months old.  My parents lived in Boston and there I went into a shiny new family of three.  We lived next door to an aunt and uncle, and less than five minutes from both sets of grandparents.  My extended family was all within an hour, most of them within ten minutes.  When I was three or so, my parents decided to move to the burbs because they wanted a better education system.  I could have gone to the Catholic school down the street where my mom went to school (more on this later), but my adoptive parents wanted another kid and it would just be better if we were in a bigger house with more than two bedrooms.  So off we went.

We moved to a town with an excellent school system.  When I say that it’s an excellent school system, I mean that my high school was ranked as one of the top 1% of high schools in the United States last year.  Yup, that was the town we moved to.  My parents were working class people in a rich town.  Cue being raised as having less than everyone else around me, but having way more than most people in a “normal” town.  It’s a lovely way to grow up and alters a lot of thinking.

I went to college, met a guy the first week of school, and fell in love.  Plugged through the first few years, grew as a person, threw myself into a challenging situation junior year as a RA, and started to understand myself more as a person.  Things were going great, and summer vacation rolled around.  My cousin started asking some questions I'd answered before, my sister finally came out with the truth that she knew more about my adoption than I did, and very quickly we found our adoption paperwork.  At 21 years old, I was handed my adoption paperwork by my younger sister and came face to face with lots of information I'd thought I'd never know.  I moved back to school a week later, never talking to my adoptive parents about it.  For all they knew, nothing had changed.  My sister and I looked at the paperwork when they went grocery shopping (true story).

I stopped sleeping.  I dropped a class I needed for my physics minor (bye bye minor!).  I didn't do my job as well as I could have.  I went from being a pretty happy go lucky kid to being moody, depressed, and tired all the time.  My poor boyfriend didn’t know what to think.  I went on a service trip to clear my head and came back ready to search.  I had a breakdown in the middle of the campus center because it was all too much for me.  I did however gain a best friend that day because she took pity on me during my melt down and became my saving grace.  With her support I searched the next day and within 24 hours had a name and then two.  I sent a letter and my whole life changed.

Fast-forward a few years.  My natural parents are nice people, but are deeply rooting in their shame of having a child out of wedlock, then getting married and having two more kids, and they couldn't handle reunion.  It was hard when things were “ending” but I'm mostly recovered now.  While all of this was going on, I was getting my Masters.  Right before graduation, my adoptive mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  I moved home immediately to help take care of her.  She underwent four brain surgeries in three weeks, I graduated in the middle of them all, and things were pretty different.  We surprised the first round, but it was rough, especially because my boyfriend stayed home (two and a half hours from where I lived) so we were doing the long distance thing for a while.  Things held steady for about a year but I badly needed a vacation.  My boyfriend and I went on a fantastic vacation to Disney World where he proposed!  We were thrilled to start to take the next step toward the rest of our lives. 

Once our feet touched the ground again (which took a few months), my natural parents decided to tell my natural sisters about me.  I was able to meet them with my fiancé at the end of the summer, about a year before the planned wedding.  I continued to get to know them as the year went on, and we became very close.  My fiancé and I moved in together this past spring which was a process in itself.  We finally got settled, and decided that we were in a position where we could afford to buy a home.  We found one house but the inspection was a disaster.  It was a huge disappointment, but we bounced back and found another house a week later.

We got married (yippee!) which was a fun time.  Remember that school where I would have gone had we not moved?  Yup, got married there.  It was everything I hoped it would be and more.  My natural sisters were at the wedding because I couldn't imagine them NOT being there.  My adoptive family got to meet them (my adoptive parents met them a few weeks before) and as far as I know, there was no major drama or issues.  My new husband and I (squee!) went on an amazing honeymoon in California (LOVE IT THERE) and we couldn't be more thrilled.  Now we're home, surrounded by wedding stuff, and getting ready to pack for the move.  And badly needing a grocery run.

And that in a nutshell is where I've been.  In just over 1,000 words. :-)  You’ll be seeing a lot more of me over the next few months as I go more into detail about some of the things that I've learned the past year or so (especially the last few months).  I missed this community and I’m so happy to be back!