week 13 - beginning 26th February 2001

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monday
Heard on the news that Tom Cruise is getting divorced and the newsreader said something about his adopted children. Why is it that on the news they never just say 'children' if they are adopted, they always stress the adopted bit? They do it even when it has no relevance to the news story, which it hardy ever does. I think they say it just as gossip for the listener. It really irritates me.

thursaday
John, my best friend has been to stay. We had a lovely few days and for the first time I felt attracted to him and started thinking it would be nice to have a relationship with him. I really like the idea of having a relationship with someone I'm already close to I've never done that before. I usually jump straight in and get involved and then once I'm through the heady days of falling in love realise that I'm not really connected to the person at all, not really. Not in the way I want to be. And I do realise that that's a kind of unavailability syndrome! I tend to fall in love with people that I can't really connect with and the people I do connect with I never normally fancy - although it looks like that's changing. The couple of times I've done it differently and fallen in love with people who I can connect with although they have loved me they haven't got involved with me because of other complications in their life. So they turn out to be unavailable all the same.

There is a complication here too. John had wanted a relationship with me for years and I just didn't feel attracted to him in that way. He finally accepted it and started to get involved with someone else also called Emma, (she's got a boyfriend by the way who she's not sure she wants to be with!) and they are just at the stage of deciding whether to make a go of it or not. I don't think its simply because he's interested in someone else that I've become attracted to him I think it's more he doesn't want something from me anymore and I feel safer with him. But am I just kidding myself? Am I still acting out the unavailability syndrome?

Is this how my adoption experience manifests in my love life? Falling for people that aren't really available in one way or another - it's happened to me too many times for it just to be a coincidence. Am I still trying to resolve my mother not being available? Am I too frightened to fall for someone who is both emotionally and physically available to me in case I loose them?

friday
I've fallen in love

saturday
Talked to John on the phone. He wants to have a relationship with me. Or us both - I don't like the idea of that! He's going away for a month and will see Emma twice before he next sees me - not how I would have planned it…………….

sunday
I've got this panic in my stomach under my ribs like something terrible is about to happen. It hit me today why the idea of John choosing one of us feels so terrifying for me. Is this what I felt way back then? Is this the terror that was squeezed into my tiny body? Is this what I could not remember and survive at the same time? When John asked me just to trust I said that's a big thing for me. It's big for all of us he said but for you there are particular issues. Yes there are! In a situation where I was completely trusting, in an appropriate way, my mother against all evolutionary expectation, thousands of years of human development, chose not to be with me. My own mother chose not to be with me. No doubt it would have taken an inordinate amount of strength to go against the pressure she was under to have me adopted and no doubt she was very frightened. But a tiny baby doesn't have all that information. A tiny baby doesn't have the information to let go with compassion. Something is wrenched from that baby, something is forced from them that they are not ready to give up.

To be continued next week.......