When the first blow lands, I don’t feel it.

… it reaches out and reaches out and reaches out - One hundred and thirteen times a second, nothing answers and it reaches out…

When I lost my job in 2013, October to be exact, I stopped spending time in front of a computer as much as I had when I was working. There was no reason for me to be in front of a computer because there was no job. And when I stopped spending the day in and day out, starting at 8am and running until 5pm, I stopped checking my email on a regular basis. It didn’t take me much longer to stop checking almost all other forms of communication. Social media made me sick and jealous of everyone I knew and in some cases, loved. And so I quit and let all that shit pile up. Thousands and thousands of unread emails. I created a whole new email because without a laptop or a computer or the time, or the inclination, to go through all those other email, it was going to just keep stacking up and locking me out. Which it had done more than once. Which is irritating to say the least. And then came 2020, and things were about to change in a huge way for most of America. Those of us without the money to fuck off to the Hamptons had to stay here and hunker down and pray we had the money and the kindness of heart to get through being stuck in a house with people, who in my case I was related to and they were all male, for gods knew how long.

Bear sits across from me at dinner at Gen Con in 2023. Not something I ever thought I would be able to say, but he came to work with me at my favorite convention.

My son was sent home on a bus for spring break in March of 2020 and we fully expected him to go back as soon as things were settled. It couldn’t take that long, right? And after those two weeks, we were told we were looking at about a month, at the outside, before the kids went back. And so my son sat at a table in the living room, with me next to him to make sure we were paying attention to things and what he should be doing. And I figured I had my laptop and a pair of headphones and my very own office chair, so fuck it, let’s start going through my email and just deleting huge swaths of it. Stuff I have never read and will never read. And un-subscribe while I was at it. Because that was a huge part of what was taking up all the room in my email. So sorting by person sent and then just deleting most of it. Until I came to an email from a website I had forgotten I had signed up for. Pretty sure it was something like adoptees.com or something. But again, didn't remember signing up for it. But starting from about the time Ryan Matthew would have been 15 or 16, I signed myself up for every single website out there that I found through Bastard Nation. And used Bastard Nation’s own message boards. All I ever found was my Aunt Rosie. Which always made me sad. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do for her during her searching. She was adopted in 1927 and never stopped looking from what I could see. Even up to her death in 2017.

Now, with birthmothers and adoptees and adoptive parents, there is jargon just like with any other group. Different rules and laws for each state for searching for parents or children. Different laws for children born before or after certain dates. In the state of Missouri, in order for a child to unseal their original birth certificate, both parents had to agree and have sent in a specific piece of paper to the department of vital statistics. I did this as soon as I could when I found out what age he could look. Originally it was age 25, I think. Then 21. But the time I figured it out that it was 18, I had that shit already filled out and sent off. But there was still the sperm donor. He also had to agree AND fill out the paperwork AND send it in to the state. And I had no need to speak to him. But I did know a couple people who knew him who could send him the information that he needed and ask him to fill the stuff out and just mail it. Jesus, I would even buy him a stamp. The outcome of me reaching out through someone who I have known since 2nd grade did not go as well as I wished. He was an asshole in 1988 and he was an asshole in 2007. Go figure that he hadn’t changed all that much. I still have the exchange and will post it when we get to that part of the story. Of course since I am not telling it in a straight line, I am not sure when I will get to that part of everything. But rest assured - once an asshole who is a statutory rapist who refused to take responsibility for what he did, always an asshole - and still a drug addict. Do I smile a bit when I type shit like that? I sure do! Because he still lies. Lies about Ryan, how I got pregnant, when he told his mother (I was 8 months along), why he left for Texas; the stories and lies go on and on. And in a lot of cases were so obviously lies and/or I have proof otherwise. His response to me, which wasn't asked for, nor needed, was to tell me all I had to do was ask him and he would have been ever so helpful. Ever so! How could I possibly think he wouldn’t be helpful? Well, jackass, there were hints along the way. Trust me. So, no, he never filled out the paperwork or sent it in. So that if Ryan applied to the state to have his original birth certificate unsealed and given to him? It wouldn't have mattered. Because the only parent that had finished the paperwork and sent it in? That was me. Color me surprised not a bit. At all. The only thing that would be made available to him was what is known as “non-identifying information”.

And so, as year after year piled on top of each other, I began to wish for other things for him when I thought of him. Happiness. A family? If he wanted one. An education? A career? Something to make him money so that he could have time and money left over to do some things he liked doing. A gentle, quiet life. That’s all I wanted for him. Mine had been so loud and angry and all over the place, I just hoped he had missed the issues that made my life so hard to live. Made better choices. Was medicated much younger than I was. Therapy when he needed it. with a good therapist. You start with huge dreams for your children, and as time goes on, you realize what you really want for them is just something better than what you had. In March of 2020, my son was 30 and well on his way to a good world, as far as I knew and hoped. And in March of 2020, I found out my son never made it to 30. My son died at 23. In October of 2013, he hung himself outside the work trailer of the business his adoptive parents owned. From a scaffolding. And since he was homeless and a drug addict and mentally ill, when people went a while without hearing from him, no one panicked when he didn’t show up when and where he was supposed to be. Apparently a cousin realized what he was hearing and went out to the building and found Ryan there. It was so close to Halloween that people who saw the body assumed it was a decoration. So my son hung dead, in plain view of the people who drove by.

This is where it happened. In front of the Gillick Brickwork building. He was living in one of the site trailers because no one in his family would help him in any way at that point. Because they didn’t help him in the first place.

I didn't tell anyone about the emails I had received or the person I was talking to about my son’s death. I didn’t even tell my husband. I think I was waiting. Because I believed it. I didn’t think she was lying. There were too many things that she and I both knew about the person I named Ryan for it to be a troll or a mistake. It was him. She told me he was dead.

I still haven’t cried. Because I am afraid if I start, I won’t stop. It’s too deep a thought to bear. So I don’t think it.