Guilt and Cigarettes -part chapter

 

 

 Hi.

 

Please have a read and offer me your thoughts, critique, last rolo....This is part of a chapter from my memoir about adoption. 

 

 

 

 

 

Guilt and Cigarettes 

 

Have you ever watched someone you love behave so foolishly that you know they will come to some harm sooner or later? You feel powerless to stop them, you want to scream at them to get their attention. You want to yell, "For Gods sake what the hell are you doing to yourself?"  But you don't yell at them. You let them carry on even though you know it will all end in tears,  

 

Why then do we often not notice this behaviour in ourselves? Why do we behave so foolishly at times? So inappropriately so naively. Why can we not see in advance the damage that we can cause to ourselves and others. We are so blind. We become lost in our own reality even if that reality is harmful to us. 

 

I have no idea why I thought that having unprotected sex was a good idea. Well actually I didn't think it was a good idea at all. I just didn't think about it. I just did it.  I think that the catalyst for me was that I needed to feel accepted. Needed to feel connected to someone. Anyone. 

 

Does any of this sound familiar? I have met and talked to other adoptees who have experienced similar. 

 

 

 

So I met lots of men. Young men, older men, groups of men. I went out of my way to connect to men that caught my eye. I flirted. I always got what I wanted. At times I got more than I'd bargained for but it didn't put me off , it didn't curtail my insatiable desire to feel accepted. Even rape didn't stop me. Even a brush with LSD didn't stop me. I felt accepted by anyone and  everyone. The one person I'd forgotten all about accepting was me.  I was was totally lost to me. 

 

I had 'fun'. I started smoking cigarettes. I felt brave and sexy exhaling plumes of black smoke from my Gauloise.   I drank beer and found cannabis.

 

 

 

I was fortunate to meet a group of lovely American girls in Paris. I developed a sense of belonging whilst with them and enjoyed their company. Going to discos and having a laugh.  There was a sense of solidarity between us. Young English speakers looking for adventure in the city of love. 

 

My adventure turned into a nightmare. 

 

 

 

I didn't believe  that I was actually pregnant, even when it was clear to me that my periods had stopped. My best friends were a couple of gay guys who worked in a record shop on the Champs Elyeese. They took me to see their own doctor who ran a test and confirmed my pregnancy. I was in shock and  I made the assumption that if I ignored it , then it would just go away. When it did sink in and I confided in other friends, they suggested I have an abortion. 

 

I'd met a prostitute in a night club who became a friend and she said she knew someone that could carry out an abortion for me without having to go to see a doctor.

 

"I can take you to see my friend", she said. She will use stones and needles and it will all be gone", she added in the most matter of fact way as if talking about how easy it was to descale the lavatory. I felt sick to my stomach, petrified to the core and hopeless in equal measure. I told her no,  I wouldn't do that.  I think however that if she could have given me a magic pill to turn back the clock and make things normal again, I'd have taken that willingly. 

 

I was lost, in a vacuum and sucked dry of any emotion. I became a spectator of a story that unfolded before me and one in which I unwittingly seemed to be the central character.  I didn't feel in control, it didn't feel like I was determining how this story would end. I floated though events, disconnected from them as if watching through frosted glass and not quite being able to make out what was happening. 

 

I partied harder. 

 

I'm not quite sure how my employer got to find out but she summoned me to see her. "I know you're pregnant and your mother is coming to collect you this afternoon, you've really disappointed us and we've noticed a few items have gone missing." 

 

I felt like I'd been steamrollered, I couldn't breathe, I gasped for air as an intense cloak of overwhelm descended over me. If ever I had wanted to run away this was the time. I wanted a chasm to open up in the floor where I stood and allow me to fall into it, into oblivion. My words caught in my chest unable to articulate themselves in any coherent fashion and in that moment I felt totally worthless and shameful. My employer who had been so wonderful and kind to me since my arrival  looked so sad and heartbroken and I just stood speechless as a huge black net of guilt descended all around me. 

 

Guilt is all consuming. 

 

Guilt is the destroyer. 

 

Guilty guilty guilty. 

 

I beat myself up. I despised myself. I sank into the abyss that was waiting for me. Hades himself could have reared his head and I would have hugged him, resigned to my fate. 

 

 

 

I packed my belongings, my mind blank and my senses numb  except for a growing anxiety of what my mother would say when she arrived. I felt scared, alone and emotionally drained. 

 

 

 

The first thing she said when she arrived was, "Well that's a fine mess you've got yourself into Joanna." She said it through gritted teeth, I could feel she was absolutely seething with anger,  sadness and horror. 

 

 

 

'I'm sorry." was all I could utter. Anything else just seemed inappropriate. 

 

 

 

The flight home was strained with little conversation and I remember little about the journey. I didn't want any further part in this movie.  I flicked the off switch. 

 

 

 

My father cried when I arrived home. I'm not sure if he cried for me or himself, he never said. 

 

 

 

I sank deeper into oblivion, I built up my walls of protection and stayed behind them like a self imposed jail sentence.  At least it meant I was contained and safe. I remained compliant, automatic, devoid of free thought and spent the next few months in a total fog. 

 

 

 

There was a succession of social worker visits to the house. Discussions which I  should have been integral to, happened around me, outside my self imposed walls. Decisions made were muffled and unclear to me. My mother took control and reminded me that I knew adoption was the right thing to do. " You know babies should have two parents, you know being adopted is a good thing, you have your whole life ahead of you". 

 

Her initial response was to ask our family GP for an abortion however I was too far on in the pregnancy for him to consider it.  A women unable to have a child naturally herself and yet she suggested abortion.  

 

 

 

Unusually for me I asked a question that I probably already knew the answer to. "What happens if I want to keep the baby?". 

 

"You'll have to find somewhere else to live", was my mothers response.  

 

Those few words penetrated my walls and caused a major earthquake. Her voice hit me hard, straight in the stomach. The pain curled around my insides and imploded causing my stomach to tie a knot in itself.  It was a strangely familiar feeling to me, that feeling of total overwhelm. Of being totally out of control of my mind, body and spirit and being buried alive. The feeling of rejection and potential abandonment it was as if death itself had called me.

 

I felt crushed. 

 

A child. 

 

Alone.

 

Terrified.

 

I complied. 

 

 

 

The last two months of my pregnancy were spent away from home, away from extended family, the neighbours, the prying eyes and questions. Away from my adoptive parents and brother who could offer me no solace, comfort or advice. 

 

 

 

I was sent to a Mother and Baby home in Tunbridge Wells. My mother told everyone I was off travelling again.  

 

Heatherwood House was full of other teenage girls across the whole spectrum who had gotten themselves into unmanageable predicaments. It was how  I imagined prison or a detention centre to feel like.  Like criminals we were sent away to serve the punishment for our crime. There were chores to do, schedules to conform to and strict rules that ensured naughty girls didn't get up to further mischief.  Any money we had from government benefits was handed over towards our keep and we were left with a small amount of pocket money each week. We spent it on cigarettes.  We weren't allowed to smoke in Heatherwood House so we chain smoked in Mcdonalds in town. If we were going to be treated like naughty girls we might as well behave like naughty girls. 

 

 

 

One by the one the girls went off to hospital to give birth. Some we never saw again whilst others came back to live in the home for 6 weeks with their babies before going off to live with their parents or boyfriend or be taken care of by the state. 

 

 

 

I spent my time justifying the rationale for adoption, the rationale I had been force fed and that I regurgitated without any deep sense of belief.  I didn't dissect the rationale I just accepted it without question, conforming to my mothers and the social workers decision that what I was doing was in the best interest of both me and my unborn child. Of course everyone else knew better than me. I had no voice. Even if I did I could not be heard. 

 

 

 

I built my walls higher, thicker, colder. 

 

 

 

 

At the mother and baby home I shared a dorm with two other pregnant girls. We were each at different stages of our pregnancy and although we shared a room that's all we shared apart from our guilt and cigarettes.  There was little fun or friendship. We were each on our own personal horrific journey to some place we didn't know. 

 

 

 

 

The mother and baby home  was run buy a hideous German woman that we all called the Fuhrer. There was nothing vaguely nice about her. She was unmarried and I'm guessing a virgin. This placed her in the unenviable position of being surrounded by wanton girls who had spread  their legs and got pregnant. I'm sure she despised each one of us. 

 

We had a doctor who would come to the home regularly to check on how we were doing. When I first arrived I heard 'whispers' about him. The girls didn't like him and told me so. I felt nervous for my first examination. The doctor asked how I was feeling. "Fine" , I said imagining that he would be judging me for my misdemeanour. He asked me to take my top off, which I did. He then proceed to touch  my breasts. I hated him. 

 

 He then proceeded to feel my swollen belly and listened to the heart beat of the life growing inside me. " The head is not yet engaged", he said as if that meant anything at all to me, which it didn't. 

 

"Here for a while longer", said the Fuhrer. 

 

That meant that I was going to be there for Christmas. What a dismal thought that was. I couldn't imagine anything worse. Christmas was meant to be spent with family and people who cared for each other. The thought of sitting around the dining table pulling a cracker with the Fuhrer wasn't something I relished. 

 

Christmas came and went blandly. It was as if the jolliness had been sucked out of it. New Year's Eve came and went again with no boom and bang. Here we were in another year. A year that would change my life forever.  

 

 

 

Two weeks after Christmas my waters broke as I was in bed. I woke up startled as I thought I'd wet the bed and felt strangely panicked and ashamed. Once I realised and called for some assistance I was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The ride seemed to take forever. The ambulance crew were used to picking up girls from the home in labour. I felt more ashamed in case they judged me. 

 

 

 

I felt nothing except fear. No sense of expectancy or joy that I was about to bring a new life into the world. I had long since disconnected and I became a watcher in someone else's movie. 

 

In the hospital I was wheeled into a delivery room. A few questions were asked of me but the hospital knew all about the Mother and Baby Home and the girls that came through from there. 

 

I was left. 

 

Abandoned once again. 

 

Left to my own devices with a head popping around the door every so often to see how I was doing. 

 

I was not doing anything. Anything that was 'doing' seemed to be doing to someone else. 

 

"You're a brave girl, are you sure you don't need painkillers" asked the nurse 

 

"No I'm fine" I said, not really feeling fine. But too scared not to be brave.  

 

 

 

24 hours of contractions. This baby knew.  He or she wanted to stay. I wanted it to stay. We were clinging to each other in desperation. Inseparable. 

 

 

 

I wanted someone to tell me it would be alright. That I'd get through this. There was no one. My mother didn't come. If there is one time that I needed someone it was now as I was about to do the most challenging thing I'd ever attempted in my life. I was on the edge of the cliff hanging on by my fingernails. I could feel my grip loosening. 

 

 

 

"This baby wants to stay in the warm, so we will put a drip in to help it along" said the midwife.  "The doctor has asked the anaesthetist to come and give you an epidural as you're exhausted, you won't feel a thing" 

 

 

 

It was true, I didn't feel a thing.  I became even more detached from myself and the muffled voices around me. I was tangled in the black net of guilt. I felt trapped like a netted monster unable to escape. I imagined the muffled voices were talking about me. How I'd got pregnant and how shameful that was. 

 

 

 

Suddenly the room seemed full. Everyone frantically setting things up for the immense arrival of new life. Legs up in stirrups, too many people asking me to do things at the same time, horrific looking implements of torture that the doctor used to extract new life from me. 

 

"Push now, come on push, just like you're going to the toilet", the midwife encouraged. 

 

I tried hard but the epidural had numbed me from the waist down and I couldn't push. So the doctor came and cut me  and then used forceps to ease the baby out. 

 

My epidural was starting to ease off so a nurse came in with a shot of Pethidine. 

 

"It's a boy, a healthy baby boy", said the doctor. 

 

I glanced over as this healthy baby boy was wrapped in blue cotton, heard him cry for me before being wheeled out of the delivery room to the nursery. 

 

 

 

The room quietened as people left. I was aware of whispers and murmuring. I felt exposed and dirty. 

 

 

 

A doctor came to stitch me up where they had to cut me. He sat at the foot of the bed and talked looking up through my wide open legs. I felt vulnerable. He asked how old I was and how come I was having the baby adopted. He seemed to care. I clung to that moment. That bizarre moment with a young doctor sitting at the foot of my bed sewing me up.  He stroked me and asked if I could feel anything yet. His stroke felt tender, familiar and inappropriate. 

 

I told him that the feeling was coming back. He looked up, patted me, smiled and left. I wanted him to stay with me. I wanted him to talk to me to tell me everything was going to be ok.

 

There was an emptiness and in that moment it was all I had.