To My Child

This story features a brief mention of domestic violence, giving up a child for adoption and just a general sense of unease.

I am so sorry. 

I’ve written the words a thousand times. I’ve written them on paper with brand-new pens. I’ve typed them on my computer in liminal word documents. The words have sat alone waiting for more thoughts and emotions to join them and I just can’t find the right combination of vowels and consonants. Every syllable feels like a mistake and when I try to write stanzas of poetry to explain everything that has happened up until this point they come off as pretentious. 

In all honesty I don’t know how to explain this all consuming feeling, the one that has my heart in a chokehold as I feel your little feet kick at the innermost parts of my ribs. 

I want to give you away. I am going to give you away. Not to unburden myself, but to free you from a life of being with me. I know that I am the problem in our relationship. I’ve made a million or more terrible choices including the night that created your very existence. I don’t blame you or think you are a bad choice. I just wish I had been better—that the man who helped bring about your heart beat was kinder, gentler, more prepared to take care of us. I wish that I could take care of myself. I know that I can’t and if I can’t take care of myself how could I take care of you? I couldn’t. It’s really that simple. I thought you deserved a chance in this world because maybe if you grow up in a home that doesn’t insist that you are a burden, a parasite, a problem to be solved, you would grow up better. I think I would have and what I am really giving a chance on are all the best parts of me. The parts of my childhood that yearned and pleaded for someone to hug me not because I had just watched them be beat and they needed my reassurance that they were loved but because I was loved. 

I want to give you the chance that I deserved and wished for. That sounds awful to say doesn’t it? That I wish my mother had given up on herself and sent me away to a family who could care about me more than she could, her own flesh and blood. I want you to know that though, this is not me giving up on you—this is me fighting for you because you deserve better and ultimately I deserved better. One day when you find me, or I find you whichever happens first I hope that I am someone who deserves you. Your parents will know who I am, I’m going to pick them out personally and hand you to them. I will give them to you wrapped in your newborn blanket after I give you a kiss and I will send you with all of my hopes and dreams for you. I have loved you from the moment I felt that spark of your burning existence and I hope you forgive me for doing what I believe is best. 

All I had to do now was fold up the letter and seal it. His parents agreed he would get the letter on his sixteenth birthday. I had sixteen years to figure my shit out and become someone worth knowing. His adoptive parents were such wonderful people and they were the kind of people who left high-school knowing exactly what they were going to do for the rest of their lives. I was just a hopeless twenty one year old who didn’t know what I was going to eat for the rest of the week. 

All I had to do was have my son, well their son I suppose and then I could start focusing on getting my life back on track, if it had even been that way to begin with. One sharp kick in my stomach later and my thoughts were long forgotten. I was tired of being pregnant and the day that I got to be done with it all I was going to eat the biggest turkey sub sandwich of my life. God I missed deli meat. 

I walked to the fridge and peered into it half expecting a platter of the most delicious pregnancy safe foods to be in there. There wasn’t, the only thing that stared back at me was a half carton of eggs and a spoiled half gallon of milk. How his parents expected me to keep their baby fed healthy food was beyond me but I always managed something. I had learned the art of consuming high protein meals, they keep you full longer and so every day started with oatmeal. Tomorrow was payday and although most would go towards bills I would have enough left over to buy some more oatmeal and beans. 

I realized I had been standing with the fridge door open when my stomach started getting cold and the little guy started trying to beat me senseless from the inside. I closed it up and began walking towards the living room when a banging happened on the front door to my apartment. Aggressive and angry followed by the yelling of a very male voice. I knew the man it belonged to and I wanted to pretend I wasn’t home but my piece of crap car was in the parking lot and I couldn’t walk very far considering how along the pregnancy I was. 

Slowly as if approaching my own death I moved towards the door. When I got to it I felt my hand shaking as I slowly turned the lock. As soon as the lock was undone, the door creaked open and a very disgruntled, very tired-looking man stood before me. His eyes were rimmed with dark circles and his beard had grown out far beyond what I had seen the last time we were together. Behind him stood a much more attractive man whom I had only encountered once or twice, for brief moments in time, usually at parties. We had never actually spoken but I had always noticed how he had a girl or two on his arms. This time there were none. He looked at me wearily though and with so much pity I would have hated to be me if I was a bystander. 

Then the disgruntled man spoke, “You’re not giving away my son.” There was no time for words as I felt my heart quicken and an unfamiliar wetness soak the legs of my pants.