The Kindness of Strangers

I grew up with strangers.  They didn’t know me before I was six days old and I didn’t know them.  I lived with them, played with their relatives, called them all my cousins/aunts/uncles/grandparents and even called these strangers Mom and Dad…but I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me.  Not really anyway. 

Gifts always came with an unspoken promise to be good for them.  To be good at pretending the family unit was a happy one…to be good at pretending that abuse equaled love.

My adoptive mother emailed me this morning, gushing over how nice Easter Sunday was, having all the family together.

And then, it happened.

She also said that she wants to give me and my fiancé some money towards the wedding.

Gulp.

She’s changed over the past several years and has become a better strangermother now than she ever was before.  But something is still telling me to refuse the gift.  Something is still telling me that she’s only doing this to prove that SHE’S the better mother.  “See??  I gave you money for the wedding…that PROVES I’m better!”.  Perhaps I’m just jaded.  Perhaps I’m just replaying the old tapes from my childhood.  It’s possible that I’m just regressing to the little girl part of me that shrinks in terror when her mother walks in the room, waiting for the explosion of anger and screams.

All that being said, I am taking the money.  Honestly, we need all the help we can get.  Child support has all but ceased (thanks for nothing exBF)…and my paycheck is eaten up by bills, groceries, gas and things that the kids need.  I just have to realize that there will probably come a day when this will come back to bite me in the ass.