endless loop

I am feeling low, low, low. Perhaps it took two months for me to decompress and have the wave of anxiety and sorrow hit me. I’m not sure but the last week or so I can barely get out of bed in the morning–a solid sign of an emotional crash. Much of what’s rumbling within centers around being born through surrogacy, my forever mental loop. I somewhat blame it on going through my stash of books to donate and re-reading just a few pages of The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler about women who relinquished their children in the pre Roe v. Wade era (RIP Roe v. Wade). It’s a horrifying read full of stories of women who got pregnant without really understanding how, were convinced to adopt, were sent away to homes for pregnant girls, told very little about the labor process, and usually never or barely saw their resulting child again. I have never been able to successfully read the entire book despite owning it for three years and now giving it away. It’s too painful, too relatable, and also too irrelevant to my story. I wasn’t born then and it wasn’t my set of circumstances. Reading endless stories about birthmoms desperate to reunite with their child and how they never were the same again simply isn’t accurate to my story with surrogacy in the early 90s. There was never supposed to be some big reunion for me.

After getting out of bed, having meditated in the laziest way under my covers for the shortest amount of time possible, I focused on defining the rights of adults born through surrogacy and came up with this: Ethical Framework: Rights of Individuals Born Through Traditional Surrogacy. Shoutout to AI for helping take my scattered notes/ideas and shaping it into something more “official” sounding, with some necessary edits per usual throughout. Will this come of anything? Probably not but I at least have one more resource I can point people towards. Everything shared there comes from direct experience. For example, this last week I went to a new doctor and, when asked about how my maternal grandparents died, I found myself unable to answer–unable to even remember their names. When I first contacted the agency my parents used asking for information about their applications, hurdle after hurdle was put in front of me. I recently contacted them again in order to ask what number baby I was that they helped create. The person on the other end of the phone laughed at me, said they would get back to me, and never has despite my calling to follow up. The story doesn’t end after the person is born and it’s taken so much life out of me to battle this larger system that never spent enough time considering what the experience might be for those born this way. I’m repeating myself now but such is the endless loop I exist on.