Not with a bang but a whimper

In the last few days, it feels as though another proverbial chapter has closed in the strange and unpredictable novel that began last August. In trying to make light of it to a friend, I summed it up thus: "To reject a child once may be considered a misfortune; to do so twice looked like carelessness."

As an adopted child growing up, the one person with whom you think you may possibly, one day, be reunited is your birth mother. As a woman especially, it always bothered me to think of someone carrying a child all that time, only to have to give it away. The mere idea of it seemed so impossible and unbearably painful to me. I fretted that, whoever and wherever she was, my birth mother may have doubts or regrets, be angry or sad. I toyed for many years with the idea of writing a letter simply to say that I was OK, that I bore no grudges, that on the contrary in her selfless act of giving me away my mother had granted me the gift of a wonderful life.

I didn't know I had a brother, and it certainly never occurred to me that there would be a birth father on the scene who actively wanted to get to know me. Wrongly and perhaps without basis in anything other than stereotype I always sort of assumed there wasn't a father, in that his role may merely have been, as a friend so delicately put it, ejaculation. So it was a surprise - a pleasant one - to find myself in touch with two blood relatives who had never crossed my mind, and, at the same time, a little sad to have no contact at all with the person who (from a physical point of view if nothing more) had the most intense connection with me before adoption.

When I read about my birth mother and her background I assumed there was no mileage in a potential reunion. As contact with my brother increased in earnest, I watched her post comments under mine on his Facebook wall, knowing fully who I was and making no attempt to acknowledge this, and it wrenched my heart just a little. I assumed this was simply her way of dealing with it until I discovered, as the drip-drip-drip of information (the whole process being hugely fragmented and unsatisfactory) continued, that when I was three she made a request to the agency for a photo of me, but the request was declined. This changed my view a little. This woman, I reasoned, had wanted to see her little girl, to know how she turned out. This woman was not cold-hearted, and most certainly not uninterested. That her request was denied seemed overwhelmingly cruel. I hoped that one day I might be able to provide her with the photo she'd asked for all those years ago, and got my chance when eventually, on my brother's Facebook, she suddenly wrote "hi Polly."

Having sought advice from two adoption charities, I contacted her by private message, taking a slow and careful approach. I sent her a picture of me aged 3, which was a fairly emotional experience. She sent me some pictures of her, and asked for photos of me now. I posted her a picture of me and my husband on a rooftop bar in Bangkok, which she said she would frame.

But things felt difficult. On the one hand, our conversations were natural and easy - we discovered we had a lot in common, including that we both have problems with our left knees but not the right ones. On the other, she seemed to be seeking validation that I could not give. "You are my life", she said of the 32 year old she had never met, not even (according to my records) directly after birth. "I think of you all the time. Did you think about me?" I felt bad admitting that, actually, I hadn't, as I'd known nothing about her, simply replying that I'd wondered about her. At the start of our conversations she told me she'd always thought about me on my birthday, but later asked "when is your birthday, January or February isn't it?" She was unhappy that I would not make her boyfriend my friend on Facebook, even though I explained that I didn't know him and was uncomfortable about this.

After less than a month of contact, and for reasons I still haven't been able to unravel, having told me the previous day that I was pretty and seemed "kind" and having made a photograph of me her profile picture, she sent me a string of messages saying she did not want to know me any more. She had asked if we could meet and I had said "soon", then suddenly she was messaging me saying "you don't want to meet me that's ok its your life do what you want." The final message simply read "I won't be messaging you no more. nice knowing you. bye."

I don't think there is a blueprint for how one should feel about this, and at the moment I'm not convinced I am really feeling anything. On the one hand, I know that I have tried. I can assure myself that I occupy a sort of moral high ground, as I could have rejected her - I could have said "You made your decision 32 years ago" and left it there. But I simply couldn't. That would have been wrong, and it would have been unfair. Instead, I achieved what I had wanted all this time: she knows that I am safe, happy, and bear her no grudges. She hopefully found peace in that. I am currently busy launching a tentative and rather self-conscious stand-up career so am going to huge lengths to invest all my energies into that. On the other hand, a little bit of my heart just irreparably broke.

So that was that - a cold, underwhelming, undramatic ending - not so much a bang as a whimper. I have never been good at rejection - a psychiatrist would, I'm sure, have a field day with all this. I have been disproportionately devastated by friends walking out on me, or even by criticism. I have spent my life feeling that I do not deserve to be here, and that I need to constantly prove my worth if I am to be allowed to stay.

And so, to misquote Oscar Wilde, as any good stand-up comic should, I will say only this before trying to start again: "To reject a child once could be considered a misfortune; to do so twice looks like carelessness." I hope my mother got something positive out of our brief relationship and is moving on. I am doing my best to do just that.