Friday, June 17, 2011

Guilt

I still haven't gotten past feeling guilty about my relationship with my birthparents, towards my parents. Even though they know I have a relationship with both my birthparents, they know I have a very close relationship with my birthmother, yet I still find myself caging comments and editing myself when I'm talking to them.

They haven't really contributed to the guilt. They will ask about my birthparents and don't seem to have any bad feelings towards them, so why do I edit myself.

Recently, Kate took me to the coast for my fortieth birthday. Had I been going with a girlfriend, I would have told my parents all about it. But, since I was going with Kate, I played it down - made it seem like just an overnight instead of a long weekend, didn't go into details.

And because my parents are old-fashioned and polite, they don't ask more questions than what I offer - they wouldn't want to "pry." But if they did pry, I wouldn't mind - it would make it seem more okay.

I am feeling particularly guilty today because I screwed up big-time with my parents. I didn't call my mom, and didn't do anything for her eightieth birthday. Yes, lovely, I know.

Do I have excuses - sure. Her birthday was the day before our department graduation, an event that I spend a lot of time and energy and stress on and 2 days later was our 5 year old's birthday party and it was all a whirlwind. But, do any of those excuses make my missing my mom's birthday - her 80th - acceptable - of course not.

What made it worse, is that I was spending that day with my birthmom, with her helping us with the ukulele graduation event, doing a dress rehearsal for that. Then she and Steve babysat the kids so Dane and I could go out. All of this while I was forgetting my mom's birthday.

The thing that makes it worse is that I didn't forget - I kept remembering during the day that it was her birthday and I should call. I had forgotten that it was her eightieth, or else I wouldn't have been so careless about it. I kept putting it off and then didn't do it.

I called a couple days later and apologized (still not remembering that it was her eightieth), she was mad. Called again today. She's mostly over it, but my dad's not talking to me. I feel awful.

And I deserve to feel guilty for that, I messed up. I'm human, I suck at birthdays and events like that that girls are supposed to be good at, that my mom is good at. But I suck all the same.

But, I wish I still didn't feel guilty for my relationship with my birthfamilies. I wish I could just talk openly and honestly and have it be normal. Even though I call my birth-sisters my sisters, and Kate's siblings aunts and uncles - I don't refer to them by those designations to my parents (Mary, instead of "Aunt Mary," Abby instead of "my sister." And playing down the time I spend with them and things like that. I don't think I'll ever quite get past that. But, maybe if I try, and nothing bad happens, then I'll get used to it. Maybe I'll try that.

But, for now, I just have to figure out how to make up for my mom's birthday.

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to view my birthmother's blog on the same topic, go to mothertone

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

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