screw it all

Well Desperate Housewives wasn't much of problem, in case any of you are scared to watch. In fact, it was a quick finish in the drama area. All of Lynette's kids are safe and sound and completely okay. So is her husband, Tom. I was freaked out about it a while back because the tornado episode was a real shocker at the end. I thought the acting and writing really was off. Quite odd, usually the actress playing Lynnette kicks ass and I find the show itself to be good for a laugh. But the lack of reality in how a real woman would act upon discovering that her kids might be dead? Gahhhh. I sure as fuck wouldn't have been sitting there standing behind the yellow tape sipping tea. It would've taken 14 firefighters to hold me back from digging them out by hand. I mean, WTF?

For example, I've met a few people who show up to report on fires, and they tell me that whenever a fire happens, if the mother is rescued first and any other kids are still in there, she will rush back in to get them if there is even one breath left in her body, no question.
They actually assign cops and firefighters to hold her back because they know the adrenaline will rush through her body and regardless of size, she will become ten times stronger than she normally is. Becoming completely paralyzed due to shock is perfectly normal as well, it's just very very stark, and looks nothing like standing around.

It's human instinct. If it doesn't happen, it's unusual and you have to ask yourself, are they in physical shock, are they on drugs, are there mental health issues? Seriously, it's that odd. Which is why Lynette, IMO, did not look like a mother. She just looked like any other actress. Sort of ummm, standing there? ?

I thought for sure they would string this show out, emotional p0rn for sale, one commercial at a time. TV shows do this regularly, whether it's on soaps or on nightime, and most especially movies. They use the grief of bereaved parents and the terror we live with to pop their ratings, but never ever actually help the real grieving parents with our pain. We're just the used leftover crap they shun in real life.

But, no they ended it in moments. Like a big fat nothing. All those commercial promos, all those endless reverberating screams, (I'm convinced they juiced the audio on Lynette's scream after I complained about how fake it was.) and then, yayyy they're alive, and they disappear. Pffft. Over.

Now the other movie I watched this weekend, We Are Marshall, is incredible, unbelievable, a really good portrayal of how death and tragedy and grief are handled in real life and how it should be handled. It was in theatres in 2006, but being a football movie, I think it wasn't something on my radar. I could go on and on, but it is the kind of thing that you have to see for yourself. Sadness, anger, frozen denial, rage at innocent bystanders, a willingness to walk through fire to get to your loved ones, an unwillingness to move on with life, a desire to avoid the things you associated with the loved ones, people wondering how others can smile and move on when they are still so so sad, messy awful difficult human emotions in all their glory. All things I've witnessed in the nine odd years I've been dealing with this.

Reality is that people who have been through tragedy and grief aren't going to act as sweetly and as nicely as the public would like. We don't fit the mold that others want to see. We're supposed to crumple gently at their feet, looking like fallen angels, all sad and weeping. If we dare to speak up, we're shrill bitches, if we dare to demand justice, we're "not able to let go", if we keep asking WHY, we're told that we're suffering from an "adjustment disorder."

And hot damn, if we dare to raise our living kids as normally as possible, and refuse to treat them like delicate spoiled flowers, if we dare to bitch about the normal travails of life for even one second, one moment, one tiny slice of time, some of our readers might even unsubscribe from our blog feed, or stop talking to us in real life. I guess they'd prefer Lynette. Well, screw 'em if they'd prefer her current saccharine brand of bullshit mothering.

Even if I pay $100,000 for IVF to have my kids, or pay $100,000 from an unethical illegal adoption mill*, or even bury 14 kids before I get to raise them, my living kids still get to be little assholes who raise mayhem, and I still get to rip my hair out over it, because they owe me SHIT, no gratitude, no debt, no obligation, just normal kid lives. Sometimes the children we have after infertility and grief and loss are going to be less than perfect, sometimes they will be evil little hell-raisers, sometimes they will have learning disabilities, and speech disabilities, and emotional breakdowns, and maybe they will even be ugly and unattractive. (Gasp, horror, ack!)

I owe them the most normal parenting experience possible. Which includes all the bad sides of mothering, not just the sweet and pretty and cute ones that form the perfect Hollywood ending. They deserve to be parented, not treasured like little glass ornaments, and they deserve to know if they screw up, and not just to be lied to. If I tell them they are perfect and adorable all day, it will turn them into characterless little disney clones. And that would be wrong. If I tell them that their mother is perfect and always always right then that would be wrong.

And if I tell it like anything less than what it is, warts and all, then I will be lying to you my dear readers. I'm not going to pretend I live in a diaper commercial. Even if my pregnancies do involve Depends every time I cough, this is not the ideal life after infertility story you've been yearning for.

You need to watch TV for that.

*The point of the comment was to show extremes that we would go to in attaining parenting, and yes, although they are rare, unethical adoption mills do exist, and good potential adoptive parents are revolted by them and try to avoid them.

If any of you want more examples of this, read some birth mother and adoptee blogs, and you will see them discussed.

But really that isn't the point of this post. I actually know people in real life who have paid that much money for IVF, people who have lost that many children, and people who have adopted in less than ideal circumstances who have had to pay huge amounts to complete the adoption. And some of these people, not all, hold it over the kids heads, like "you owe me" for freaking forever.

It makes me sick when I see it, and as an adoptee, it reminds me of all the times I was told how "lucky" I was to have been saved from a supposed terrible fate of being raised by a single mother, etc. by my adoptive parents. Meanwhile, they were lousy parents themselves.

I am not trying to slam adoptive parents, the phrase was meant to show extremes in all parenting, and I certainly didn't single out adoptive parents only.