No Princess

Diary #1

Dear Diary,
It's been a year now since I let go of my daughter. I know it was what was best for her, but it doesn't feel like it was best for me. It feels like apart of me is missing. I feel empty without her. She completed me and I finally felt like somebody not only wanted me, but they needed me. A little girl needed me and I abandoned her. Now my daughter is living with strangers. I barely know them, yet, my daughter is forced to call them her parents. I'm not saying they're bad people, because they're not. I have met them and they seem nice, but nobody is good enough for my baby. She deserves the world. Is this how every mother feels? Probably not, because every mom doesn't have to give up her baby less than a year after she had them. I had nine months with my daughter. Only nine months of giving her love and my world. She became bonded to me and my family. We adored her. She was a princess when she was in my hands and in the hands of my family. My family has always been so supportive. I'm the youngest of four, and it destroyed my parents when I, their baby, ended up pregnant at fourteen. I defined innocence in their eyes. I was the last one they'd expect to be pregnant at fourteen. But here I am, now with an almost two year old girl, who I miss so damn much. How can I continue on my life like everything is normal? My daughter is not in my life anymore, and I've spent a year acting like it was what was supposed to happen. I have spent a year forcing myself to think it was fine. But it's not fine. I should've done something when she was born. I wasn't ready to take on that responsibility while starting high school. But after a week of caring for and loving my daughter, I knew it was meant to be. I knew signing the adoption papers was a mistake, but I felt like after a week, I couldn't be well enough after birth to be straight with my parents. A week became a month, and one month became six. I was raising my daughter as my own, knowing in three months, I'd have to say goodbye. I wanted to protest, I wanted to scream and shout that she was mine and nobody else's and I had the rights, no matter what papers I signed, to keep her with me. But I knew I didn't really have those rights as a minor. Even as her mother, I didn't have those rights. I wasn't even given the title of her guardian during the nine months I spent with her. My mother and father were considered, by law, to be her legal caregivers. And her adoptive family were considered her parents. Never have I had the legal right to say that she was my daughter. Birth daughter, maybe, but I've learned that it didn't make her mine. She is, and always will be, her adoptive parents' child, not mine. It hurts like hell, but it is what it is. I don't have any rights to her anymore. I don't even have legal visitation, even though her adoptive parents are generous enough to give me that right. We never signed anything. I guess I think that what's written on paper is everything. If it isn't written in ink and imprinted on a sheet of paper, it can't possibly be legit. That's just the luck that I've had with a pen and paper. The words written, the signatures, always seemed to end negatively for myself.

Either way, I guess this is what it's going to be like. I can see my daughter every now and again, but I will never hold her hand and walk her to school, I will never wave at her in the crowd when she receives an award at school, I will never cheer her on at her sporting events, I will never take her out for dinner to celebrate her birthdays, I will never stand at her wedding and watch her give her life to a man who loves her, and I will never be able to just be her mom with no strings attached. I was fourteen and having a child at that age was heavily looked down upon by my family and society. I guess there's not much I can do. Mom is calling me for dinner. I don't even wanna eat. Until next time, diary.

- April 11th 2016