My Resolve

I don’t even know if I can drag the story out of me at this time. I’m so tired and so hurt. I’m emotionally raw and just like a bad sunburn, it hurts simply to exist. There is a long story about what’s going on, but it all boils down to me having the audacity to want to be called Mom and not Ash. This core issue combined with disrespect, a dash of contempt, and a heaping of attachment dysfunction and well you have a recipe for disaster. I honestly don’t want to keep talking about it. It doesn’t feel like there is a resolution. I’m having the same heart pounding dreadful feeling I had just before Flaco walked out. I can’t let something go, I can’t acquiesce to someone else’s desire and so they will leave me. In this case, I can’t let go of the idea of being Primero’s mom and he flat out refuses to accept me in this position. It’s not just about the name, it’s about the position that is tied to the name. And in rejecting my name as Mom Primero is also rejecting me. We had a painful therapy session last night that ended without resolution. And we haven’t really spoken since. Primero admitted that bio mom and I are in a competition in his heart and pretty much conceded that he would leave to return to his bio family the second he turned 18 and has a choice in the matter. He called his bio mom the morning of the day her rights were being terminated to ask her opinion about calling me mom. Ouch! I have never, not ever, wavered on my decision to adopt him. I call him my son, I treat him as my son, I think of him as my son. But, he is once more thinking he might not want to be adopted because he thinks calling me mom is a requirement. I would settle for something other than Ash. He thinks giving me a nickname denotes bonding. I think it’s a way to hold me at arm’s length. After our fight Friday night, he wrote in a note that he felt our relationship was more of a friendship than anything else. Wow, did that hurt!

The rational side of me knows he is scared, knows he is testing me and this whole relationship because it’s frightening. He’s pushing to see if I will bail on him like everyone else has (his bio mom, his uncles, his previous foster home). But, the emotional side of me, that soft under-belly, is dying. I can’t sleep. I don’t want to eat. I cry at the drop of a hat. I look like hell and feel even worse. I want to be able to separate myself from the emotional so I can be rational and sane, but I just can’t seem to do that right now. My heart is shattered and I’m trying to shove the pieces back together again. We aren’t talking, we are just co-existing. Primero is glib about the whole thing, at least on the surface. What he’s thinking or feeling right now are a mystery to me.

I haven’t been very open in sharing with others about this situation because I don’t want to hear that I should give up on him, choose not to adopt him because he’s not treating me right at the moment. No one would ever suggest a mother give up on a biological child, why would I give up on the boy I call my son? I’ve said it a thousand times in the past few days – I’m not rescinding my commitment to adopt Primero. If he chooses to not be adopted, then that will be a decision made solely by him. I don’t give up easily and I won’t give up on him, not like all the other people in his life. If he’s testing me to make sure I won’t up and leave, that’s fine. Let him see my resolve. I’m a tough chick, I’ve been knocked down before and I managed to pull myself back up, so I certainly won’t stay down this time. I just hope and pray that we can get through this tough time and create a stronger bond in the process……