What were your parents doing at your age?

*Manical Laughing in the background*

Ahhhmmmm,

LIVE!

It’s Tuesday, I think- +12 hours for the EU folks joining in today.

I’m not even going to attempt more of an intro, LETS GO!! 🚨🚨🚨🚨

Grown Annie: “First things first. We need a Mage? Anyone?“

Annoying Child Spawn Annie: *scoffs* Why?”

Grown Annie: “ Well Kiddo, we are going to need to go back in time and make three stops in order to take these folks where the prompt asked us to go.”

Child Spawn “Why 3 stops? The prompt asked about our parents. We only have 2.”

Grown Annie: “You do not fully understand who you are and why they keep saying your adopted. I know that you have pushed it to the side because the word is meaningless to you- but there will come a day when the truth will be exposed, and instead of shattering our world into pieces in an anger like I did..

*Grown Annie stares down at her younger self with intense maternal threat*

…sit down. Shut the fuck up, and focus on the information at hand.”

Child Spawn Annie: “Yes, Ma’am”

The year is 1985.

Our life is currently filled with terrible kitchen bowl cuts, a cold nosed beagle named snoopy and a wooden playset with sandbox in the backyard at 1801 is our entire world.

We are 3.

We love Mom and Da Poppa, and even our brother Batman sometimes too. We like football, soccer, dirt and mess. Get it girl, you’re learning so fast.

There is one thing that has yet to hit us. Although it’s already known. It will take us the next 39 years to unravel, the riddle we’ve been told.

‘You come from the heart, not from the womb’- Am I a super human? Alien? Or relative of that weirdo, Jeff Bloom.

All of your questions will go unanswered, for that this time nothing is known. Just wait until you’re older, until the system considers you grown.

Right now you’re safe in this home, right where you’re supposed to be. Trust your parents. Take it from me.

THE MOTHERSHIP

I have got to say something up front before starting this. As someone with RAD, my ability to make genuine attachments is rooted in those I implicitly respect and trust. This also plays directly into my flavor on the spectrum, because… it requires both trust and respect for me to listen and follow the orders of others.

Mom would have been 40 in 1985. She was a Stay At Home Mother to my brother APK and I.

Darlene would have been 40 in 1995. Raising someone else’s children and depending on her second husband since my father to survive.

While I was off living a good life at the age of 3, my biological mother had already imbedded herself into another family. She passed away last year leaving behind a web of twisted truths and uneducated lies.

Yet her ghost will always haunt me, genetics cannot be erased. When I look her picture, I clearly see my face. My round cheeks and uncontrollably curly hair. Yet it’s on me, not some stranger. My personal mindfucks sickening embrace.

My parents are Jewish Americans from Tacoma, Washington. The same place Darlene birthed and simultaneously abandoned me. For fucks sake, she lived less that 20 minutes away from me for my ENTIRE life in Tacoma.

On the flip side- I refuse to harp on my (adoptive) Mom. I’ve done enough of that in the past which I’ve come to put to bed. Regardless of what I have said in my pain and anger, I have never lost my love or respect for her and what she did in adopting me. Sure, we have our struggles. Yet, very little of that is actually her fault.

However when it came to developing, nurturing and really investing in the creative side of things, Mom was the Queen Supreme. Her intricate paisley doodles would form from the tip of a crystal ball point Bic pen. As they flowed curving line after line through the grains of the standard legal pad sheet. The end result was a twisted mess of missed thoughts from a phone conversation that had too much open spaces, or maybe little moments which she’d chosen not to share. Yet, I sat memorized, they were retro paisley curls just like my hair.

That young girl that was watching memorized the patterns, without a care. I can replicate them today, very easily. Those very curls live etched in my skin on this very day.

We couldn’t connect mentally, but we speak a language that only a rare few can read. The heart line is always strong, because it can’t bleed. ❤️

When it comes to adoption, you never know what genetic funhouse you’re going to get!

THE FATHERHOOD

I’m not playing when I say, I won’t do a fucking thing for you if you have not showed me that you are pure of intention.

This is the case when it comes to my father’s. My adoptive father, Yo Poppa ❤️ has my unbridled respect and trust. In 1985, he was 36. Only four year her junior, my father was light years beyond her both mentally and emotionally. Can you tell which parent I managed to make the connection to?

Not only did he spend his days and nights working at my grandparents Lumber Yard, he would come home and have the patience of a saint while I would have a mental breakdown trying to do 3rd grade multiplication tables. More importantly to younger me, he was the only one that spoke my love language back to me. He listened.

My biological father on the other hand was 39, a Master Arborist in his trade. A Vietnam veteran and avid outdoorsman, he had moved on from a life riddled with wars. He spent his time in the trees, or so they say. He had blond Hair that had turned grey and a mighty beard, salt and peppered from his military days. Standing stout in his posture, the German genes fully in place. His pictures in uniform bring me to a questionable place. We are trained to have unshakeable honor, yet I was your greatest disgrace?

Yet remains the lingering question of my respect for him. The full acknowledgment of my bloodline, the claiming of my name.

Bare bones about it, he’s just another stranger with a familiar face. He wasn’t my parent, just the man who made an ill fated donation to father me.

THE CREATION

Bring it back to current day, dear Mage. Stop right at the spot where I lay, writing these words on a iPhone in bed. Smoking Berry Bliss to get through the first seizure pod of the day.

Exactly at the half point in the cycle of age 41. Begin the midlife decay. It’s been about a year now since I’ve learned that everything hurts. Including my brain, which is absolutely the worst.

Labeled as too old for service, but too young to retire. I sit here waiting, wishing and hoping that someday someone will recognize I’m tired.

I’m haunted in my dreams by things that weren’t my fault. Others people’s damage passed to me, by default.

I understand I’m whining, and this may seem ignorant and foolish to most. But y’all clearly have never been chased by your own ghost.

Echos of a history, hidden by a personal war. How dare you claim your innocence to your families when you clearly knew the score.

RCM 22.33 is my name. The one you bore me with. A child of the system, raised by strong Jewish parents. I wear your tattered looks with style, attitude and grace. I’m proud of my uncontrollable blond curls and round face. Its been a lifetime struggle to obtain and understand the story of my very own face.

The truth is always out there. Do not be afraid to look.

Despite what your parents may have to say. ❤️💋