Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 91

Dear Cheryl,

Have you ever felt like you’ve changed in every way but on the inside? Like your identity has been tied to one part of you for so long, that when you stop being that thing, even then you don’t really stop being that thing? That’s me these days. And I can’t tell which I am, what I always was or what I seem to be now.

I don’t trust change. I don’t trust that change that happens so fast can be permanent. I don’t know exactly how time aligns between here and home, or home and there, but we first met a year ago. Can you believe that? That’s what marks adulthood, I think, when a year stops being long.

The leaves on the trees are changing here. Just like home. All those dark and bright shades of green turning to reds and yellow and purples and oranges, all those brilliant colors. They harvested the grapes not long ago, and the leaves on the vines are changing, too, neat rows of vines, a rank and file of flora freed from the weight of their fruit. The yeast occurs naturally, living on the berries, just waiting for the winemaker to break the skin, and juice turns to wine.

Those brilliant leaves that filter sunlight like a prism will soon turn to greys and browns and fall to the harvested earth, the bright browns and dull browns and tans of soil not long ago invisible under golden grass cut from the ground to get the cows and the sheep through winter.

I have something in my life I never had before: touch. I lectured a hundred parents about touch. How it helps a baby grow. How it heals. How it communicates. How it helps us thrive. I never had touch, not really. I do now. Gentle touch. I knew so much about what a neglected baby was missing out on. I never thought to wonder what I was missing out on.

I still don’t know what we are to the amazons. No one seems to be able to explain it without resorting to analogies about pets, children, or people with disabilities. I suppose, in fairness to the amazons, the latter two aren’t entirely inaccurate ways to think about regressed littles, but so far as I can tell, the best answer to how they see me, at least the ones who know I’m not regressed, is I’m seen as less than a fully functional adult because I consented to living as less than a fully functional adult. Like there’s no distinction between how I consented to live and how I’m actually capable of living or who – or what – I am. It’s not malicious; it’s the exact opposite. Like by being adopted I told them who I was, or at least how I wanted to live, and they’re doing everything they can to do what I asked, and a lot else besides. Like they took my decision to be adopted a lot more seriously – and literally – than I did.

We’re all littles to them; I guess they take adoption in that regard – as what defines a human like you from a human like me – more seriously. I can’t tell which of us they’re humoring, or at least I don’t want to admit it. You warned me when you said they really do see us as less than fully capable, but I think I didn’t and still don’t want to believe it.

I’ve reached the point where, rather than try to arrive at an acceptable answer, I’m now trying to decide whether to resent the way I’m viewed or just accept it. I feel like I should resent it, and I do when it comes from the wrong person or is done in the wrong way, but I don’t resent it from my people anymore. But I still feel like I should, even like maybe I should resent myself for allowing it, maybe even more for starting to like it.

One thing I learned a long time ago is you can argue over right or wrong for only so long before, if you’re smart enough, you realize the struggle you should be having, the one that won’t burn you out and might even let you one day be happy, is how to incorporate the fact of what is into your life, right or wrong. I fought right against wrong for a long time; it was a good fight. Now look where I am.

Someone called me on all this the other day, someone who didn’t see me as a little, maybe because I’m not regressed or maybe just because he doesn’t see humans the way other amazons do. Flat out asked if being here as an unregressed little wasn’t just ridiculous. I felt ashamed when he said it, and then I remembered what mattered was incorporating the fact of what is into my life, not battling with the right or wrong of it. But I’m not sure if I’m fooling myself, if I’m just telling myself I’ve accepted what is when I really haven’t, or maybe that I’ve accepted what is when really, I accepted what’s right. Or feels right. Or feels good.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Or maybe it does. My therapist told me I need to learn to trust that good feelings aren’t illusions, that they really can last and that I need give myself permission to feel good. I’m not proud of what I said back; I think I got angry because I know she’s right, but I don’t know it my heart.

I still wonder what I’ve done to deserve it all, all this love, but deserve is probably the wrong concept. Deserve never did have much to do with anything back there. I spent the afternoon with a new friend; no, deserve doesn’t mean much there, here, or anywhere.

So think on fortune instead of ‘deserve.’ My good fortune that you were my caseworker and remain my dear friend.

Cheryl, these letters are getting more and more difficult to write. I feel like I just wrote in a circle, and maybe I did, probably because I feel like I’m stuck in what these days. The distance of space and time, between who and what I was was and who and what I am, is befuddling. I suppose I’ll end this letter with what I know.

I remembered the last time I held a human hand in tenderness before today, and it was yours.

Your forever friend,

Jamie

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“Knock-knock,” Amanda said as she came into Jamie’s room. “Dinner time.”

“Hey.”

“What are you up to?”

“Writing a letter.”

Amanda didn’t like it when he wrote letters, not because she resented him communicating with his caseworker, whatever the two of them had going on between them, but because Jamie never seemed happier for having done it. She wanted to understand in the hope that she or her mom could help, but she didn’t want to push the subject, and she knew there might be no helping, depending on what it is he wrote to her. Still, she wouldn’t be much of a sister or friend if she didn’t try.

But right then all she could do was see that Jamie had come home in a good mood and was not in half as good a mood now.

“I’ll mail it for you when it’s done.”

“It’s done.”

“’Kay. I’ll put it in the mailbox before bed.” He set the letter down. He looked at it on the table for a moment and held up his arms. The kitchen was fifty steps away, but he wanted to spend those few seconds being held by one of his people.