Saturday, October 16, 2010

I'm Not Always Passive

I was going to write a blog post about how Kismet has been doing to date in our house and at school but there's just been something else that's been burning in my mind for the last few days that I want to get out of my system. And that is how much I want to kick the ass of Kismet's bio mom.

I can sorta deal with the fact that this woman chose drugs over her daughter. I mean, I've never used drugs, never been addicted, but I get the fact that the road to recovery is extremely difficult, particularly if you don't have a good support system in place. I get how hard it can be for some people to make the right choice, to get the help they need to clean up. But when you choose to walk out of rehab rather than stay and get clean when it's your last chance to get your child back, I can't deal with what that does to your child. You have just told your child that they don't mean that much to you. There's probably little more you could have done to destroy their self-esteem and you leave it up to someone else, a total stranger, to try to help your child pick up the pieces of their life.

But that's not all. Kismet put pictures of her bio mom up on the walls of her bedroom. I know that she still loves her mom. I also know that she still has a lot of anger towards her mom as well. She told me that her mom used to hit her and, while she hasn't said as much, we suspect her mom used to call her stupid, because she's very sensitive to that word. And her mom lied to her about some stuff that totally hurt Kismet's feelings. And totally flaked out on her when she was supposed to visit her.

Then, because Brad is like uber-virtual-stalker and wants to know where Kismet's family are and what they are doing, he discovered the bio mom's Facebook page. On it, bio mom has posted pictures of Kismet. And she says stuff under the pictures like, "Me and Kismet forever." Umm... no, you stupid cow, you gave up the right to have her forever when you walked out of rehab and went back to drugs. And she has Kismet's name tattooed on her leg. She lost her parental rights two years ago. It's a new tattoo. And she posts a picture of Kismet and says, "Kismet's happy face. I love her smile, she's so pretty." Okay, I get that maybe she misses her daughter. And maybe she's sober enough to realize that she fucked up badly in her child's life. Maybe. Or maybe she just wants her friends to think that her daughter is still an important part of her life. I don't know.

What I do know is that she did fuck up badly in her daughter's life. So badly that Kismet had to spend a year in the mental hospital in the kids wing. Yeah, that bad! And the mom was still "involved" at that point in Kismet's life. But did she straighten herself out, get sober, once she realized that her actions put her daughter in the mental hospital? NO! SHE DID NOT! And that, my friends, is what burns my butt more than anything else. Kismet has pictures of her and her mother on the wall taken at the hospital. And it makes me furious. Not that Kismet has the pictures of her mom on the wall. Much as it bugs me because I'm the one putting Kismet to bed at night, tucking her in, giving her kisses and staying in her room until she falls asleep because she's scared and Brad is the one who gets up with her in the middle of the night when she has nightmares, and she has a lot of them, and he gets her ready to go to school in the morning and picks her up from school when she's had a bad day. In spite of all that, I do understand why she has the pictures up.

No, I'm furious that this woman just DID NOT CARE about her own child. I know it happens, it's why a lot of kids are in foster care and why a lot of kids are up for adoption. But the fact that this woman is still posting pictures on Facebook and acting as if she loves her daughter so when she had a chance to make it all right just makes me want to punch her in the face. And so help me god, if I ever see her, I'm gonna do it.

5 comments:

Hysteria said...

The tsunami of your emotions sends smaller waves across the globe and straight into my heart. In spite of all the things that are tearing you up inside, I am glad for you that you can express yourself well enough to get some of it out, share it with others and draw support that way.

As a fellow parent, I wonder if you and Brad are getting some sort of therapy or counseling to help you deal with K's mother and your feelings towards her?

As a daughter of two parents with mental illness and severe personality disorder (getting very personal here for my first comment in your blog), I feel for K like a kindred spirit when you describe her. The reactions you see in her when the word "stupid" is used...I feel those reactions like a lump I can't swallow, like a knot in my stomach, like desperate, angry tears behind my eyes. And I will bet anything that she would have worse reactions to words that she simply will not hear around you and your family. Thank goodness for that, anyway.

OK, gotta stop writing and collect myself.

Love, Matilda Farmer

Diana said...

We are supposed to be joining in family therapy with Kismet on a weekly (I think) basis starting this week. We won't be dealing with her mother at all, since we are adopting Kismet and her bio mom is essentially out of the picture. However, we do have some concerns about her family, who live not far from us, and what happens when inevitably we run into them. We have to be prepared to make some hard choices to keep her safe and keep them away from her. But yes, I do have pretty strong feelings about her bio mom and will need to find a way to work it out.

We have never, and would never, call Kismet stupid. But she always says, "I'm not that stupid", even when no one implies she is. Brad started to call her a stinker one day but stopped at the "st" sound and she thought he was going to call her stupid, getting extremely angry. So we suspect that her mother used to call her that.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings, Matilda. It means a lot to me.

Erin said...

That's a tough tough situation. I do not envy your position. Even though I only read this one, I realize that there is a lot more I need to catch up on - the anger you have is extremely justified.

Although I have a very different outcome, I can sort of see both sides of it... I had a child in 1994 who I gave up for adoption because I was in a similar situation. Still in college, a guy who I wasn't planning on marrying, couldn't afford the child, etc... of course, I made the right decision and gave up rights before I could make his life bad as your bio mom certainly did to Kismet, but I still missed him horribly. I placed him for adoption when he was born. I also would show pictures of him and blah, blah, blah so I get that she is still extremely attached to her. I truly truly get that and I think from my standpoint, I would only suggest that no matter what happens in a mother child relationship, that bond is just always going to be there no matter what. HOWEVER, that she continued to put Kismet into an abusive situation and continued to do drugs is beyond reproach in my opinion.

You have to make the right decisions, I knew enough to make the right one for both of us at the time, and I only wish that Kismet's bio mom did the same for her. It's a shame that parents think they can treat their children abusively just because they are "theirs" That woman doesn't deserve any relationship with Kismet, she wronged her early on and for the sake of the child, I hope you never run into her family or anything that would put Kismet in an awkward and possibly vile situation.

As a positive outcome to my situation, we had an open adoption and he is present in my life as much as he can be - I see him once a year on my way to Rhode Island and he is on my facebook which I just love :-)

Hope this makes sense - I sort of rambled :-)

Diana said...

Hi Erin,

Thanks for reading and thanks for your comment. I really appreciate the input from a person with a perspective of having given up a child for adoption. It helps to put the bio mom's feeling into perspective about Kismet. I guess I have a hard time accepting the fact that a person could choose to do all the things she's done to Kismet and still claim to love her child, but I suppose that the drugs have just made it too difficult to function properly as a mother, which is already a difficult job to begin with.

The more I hear about the bio mom from Kismet, the more angry I get but I have to push as much of it out of my head as possible because I just can't dwell on that anger. In fact, Kismet told me something about her bio mom last night that upset me but I refused to dwell on it and pushed it right out and have now forgotten it. Thank goodness. :-)

I'm really happy to hear that you have an open adoption and that you get to see your son once a year. That is really awesome for you and it's so nice that he has a good family to care for him as well as having you in his life, too. You should be proud of yourself for doing the right thing for him. It's a great thing you did.

Connie said...

I think you're right about her BM calling her "stupid". I was called stupid all growing up by my mom..."You never do anything right, how could you be so stupid", "you never finish anything, are you really THAT stupid"...and it does stick with you. Even now, in my 40's, I'm very sensitive to anyone implying I did something wrong...they don't even have to say it. I always counter with "I am not stupid!" It's out of my mouth before I even realize how I feel.

I try very hard with the boys to guide their thinking/decision making. Not to get them to think MY way, but to think things through and see the consequences. ("Let's step outside and see if 40 degrees is good weather for shorts and a Tshirt")

We've also made "stupid" kind of a dirty word. It's never allowed to be directed towards a person, and try to think of another word when directed towards actions and things. They hear their friends say it, and because of the way they are become quite upset when they hear it, so we've started the "well, we try not to say it in our family" thing.

I don't know if I have anything constructive to say, really.....but I "get" her sensitivity to the word and think you're on the mark.

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