How morbid and depressing I can be. I'm trying to make a list of things to do today... and I'm torn between getting out to Salmo because I said I would and staying here and doing whatever. I think I'd like to ride out there tomorrow morning with Matthew. We can do it if we leave early enough. I can spend today finishing my stained glass, cleaning up that table area, packing and then doing whatever needs doing around here. Maybe I'll sketch... I haven't in too long. Practice makes perfect..... no, not perfect, but practice makes art. Without it, I just think about making art, and that doesn't accomplish anything.

Another sleepless night. Perhaps tonight I will take the plunge and make some sleepytime tea. Though not yet.... too much pondering going on. Some of it, I hope, coming to good. More and more and more of the overwhelming feelings of the weekend washing over me. To the point of getting into a state that I have not been in since I was in my teens. Absolutely overwhelemd. Numb. Feeling separated from everything else in the universe except what was going on in my own head. Which wasn't pretty.

I'm sure it's regression. I'm sure it's due to meeting my birth family and going back to the "trying to fit in" feeling of my teens. But I think there's something more there, too. Feeling not good about myself to the point of walking into the bathroom and suddenly wondering how much blood would drip from my arms were I to slash them with an exacto isn't normal, even for me. I seem to think it's a big secret that I don't think I'm good enough - but I'm always hinting at it... asking for approval.. checking in with my honey to be sure he's not going to leave me... it's become worse because of the regression, I think.

The one good thing in all of this is that I am able to look at it, once the feelings of numbness pass, and seriously say to myself. I am going to go get some help with this. I can't do it on my own, but I CAN do it.

I lied, there are two good things in all of this. The above, and the fact that M. is totally willing to come with me on this trip to figure out why I feel this way. For us.

He rocks. We'll make it.

This weekend was a multitude of feelings and emotions. I feel like I'm 15 all over again. I'm visiting with my birth family more and more.. this weekend, our 'nuclear' famliy was all together in the same place for the very first time. It was a farewell party for my birth sister Candy. Birth mom, birth dad, birth sisters... all together. As I always have done, I was trying to fit in. Why do I do this? Why have I ALWAYS done this? Why has it NEVER, not once, not EVER... felt like I actually belonged despite my efforts? Is this a feeling that is life-long for adoptees? I don't fit with my adoptive family, I don't fit with my birth family. I don't fit ANYWHERE. Even in my relationship... I don't feel like I "belong". I feel like, through no fault of my own, everything good that happens will eventually come to an end. I will live my life full of memories. Memories of what was, memories of dreams. I will live my life as a fraction of what it could be. Who am I? Where do I belong? Maybe I'm too scared to let myself belong anywhere. Always the chameleon. Changing my colour to fit that of those around me. Some have called me 'original'. I don't. In my mind, I'm the biggest fraud there is.

There are moments, fragments of my life, where I don't feel this way. When I know, definitively, what purpose it is I have devised for myself, when I experience life from a place of strength and certainty. I thought that meeting my birth family would be one of those... instead I find myself a child again. A teenager - but with no rules. I can drink, smoke pot... do anything at all as I flail through the emotions, the doubts and the death of dreams. Coming to terms with the reality of a family that I never knew. An origin that is shared. An experience that is not.

Maybe that is the work of reunion? Maybe that is the experience of reunion. It is my experience. Is that where I belong? In my own experience?