I was tidying my paperwork yesterday and found all the paperwork for it, I filed it a long time ago. It’s all very ‘business’ like including receipts and a long list of what my dad was fed. There’s no love or care. It’s so cold and transactional.
I got told when I was 3 years old that my grandparents weren’t really, because of adoption. I was taken to meet my ‘real’ family and told to keep them a secret. I can’t remember them at all, I know I met my cousin and my ‘grandparents’ at least once. I’ve kept a couple of letters. But the adopted family, they feel like mine, my proper family if you like.
I don’t know much about it. Dad’s mother was 17. She didn’t have a choice in the situation I don’t think. My mum told me she thought she was raped. My dad traced her in his teens.
She didn’t have a good life. She died in her 50s. She was an alcoholic and lived in abject poverty. I think she ended her own life, but I don’t know. She used to call my mum when I was a baby and scream down the phone that mum had stolen her baby. My mum was utterly traumatised from meeting her.
I only have 3-4 photos of her, one of her holding my dad. One of her as a baby herself. One of her about my age now, and one where she’s older. And then one of her grave. She looks my sister, but not me. Her family have sporadic contact with my dad. None with me at all.
I don’t know what to make of it all. It’s all just sad. My dad’s adopted mum and dad lost a baby before, they called my dad after that baby. They were meant to adopt another little girl too, but it never happened. One of the letters I’ve got is all about that little girl.
My dad is a very unhappy person. He’s told me many times he didn’t want a child. He doesn’t know how to be a dad. We have very little to do with each other.
I’ve never really talked about it to anyone, not in any detail.
I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know if I should carry on keeping all that paperwork. Why am I holding onto these letters for a procedure that just seems very sad and probably should never have happened?