Hi!  It’s me!  Lily!

Or am I Yuriko?

Or both?  Or neither?

Today, I think, will be a day for reflection.

I was looking back at some of my old diary entries.  I remember one where I was in a great mood, I was dancing around in my seat, calling people willy nilly silly billies, just having a great time.  I didn’t know my name, didn’t know who I was, everything before my finding day was an utter blank.  And yesterday some of that mystery was solved.  I found out I’m a half-Japanese girl named Yuriko, that my birthday is September 3rd, that my birth mother is named Emiko, and… and…  it’s really such a let down.

Maybe I didn’t want to find out who I really was.

Before I knew who I was, I could think anything I wanted about my past.  Maybe I came from another dimension and dropped here out of a rift in the sky, and all my memories are in the other dimension.  Maybe I was born in a test tube in a government agency, and they wiped my memory when they were done with me.  So many different possibilities, and yesterday I find out that it was so much worse than all that, so much more normal – my birth mother was pregnant, had me, couldn’t take care of me, and abandoned me.

I’d almost rather not have known.

I don’t know why she left me, I don’t know why she hurt me like that.  What would life have been like with her?  Maybe good, maybe bad, but I don’t know.  And I’ll never know because she took that away from me!  My own birth mother left me!

And I know I found Dave and Sabby and my new family and I love them to death but my birth mother is supposed to be mine, and instead I found out that she’s not, she gave me up, she didn’t want me.  Me!  I’m so cute!  Who wouldn’t want me!  Well, except for maybe the cat.  I’d say “was it my fault?” but I was an infant!  It wasn’t my fault!  It couldn’t have been my fault!  Could it?

I hate her!  I hate her and wish I’d never known!  I wish they’d never came to my door and told me!

Be careful what you wish for, they say, you just might get it.

Maybe she had a good reason.  The rational part of me understands that being a single mother having a child in the middle of an evacuation couldn’t be an easy thing no matter what.  The rational part of me understands that maybe she didn’t feel like she had much of a choice, and maybe she thought she was doing the best for me.  The rational part of me understands that she might have been young, and who knows what was going on with my birth father, and maybe she decided that that was the best thing to do.  And maybe she was right.

And I still hate her.

Emiko Nakamoto.  The woman who ruined my life before it even started.

Sabby talked to me today.  She could see the bitterness start to take hold.  She could hear the hatred in my voice when I talked about Emiko.  She told me that having those kinds of feelings never lead to anything good.  I told her she’s not the one whose mother abandoned her!  And then I immediately regretted it.  But the hurt on Sabby’s face…

I’ll never forget that.

She went to her room and took a bath.  She’s never done that because of me.  Never ever.  Afterwards she sat me down and told me in clipped, measured tones that her parents did indeed abandon her and that she spent her childhood in foster homes and that there was a reason why she was a “wild” child and that she understands that I’m hurt and having a hard time processing that I found my birth mother but don’t I ever dare to assume that she doesn’t understand what it feels like to be abandoned by parents.

I actually burst out crying and told her I was so sorry.  She told me she understood but I had hurt her very deeply, and that this is what having these feelings of anger and resentment and hatred leads to, and that I’d better check myself before I cause actual damage I can’t easily repair.  That she’d get over it but I only had one chance to get to know my birth mother and I’d better not wreck it because I can’t get past my own hatred.  Then she walked upstairs.  I’ve never seen her look so…   hurt.  And doubly so because of me.

I messed up.  And I still hate Emiko Nakamoto.

But you know what?  Emiko Nakamoto doesn’t exist anymore.  She’s Emiko Johnson now.  She apparently married at some point, and not Robert Landry.  Does she have children?  Did she give any of them up?  She seems to want to talk to me.  Does she regret it?  If she had it to do over again, would she?  I don’t know.  I hate someone that doesn’t exist anymore.  Would I like her now?  Would we get along?  Could I even treat her as a friend, if not as someone I could be close to?  I don’t know.  And if I keep this up, I never will.

I hate Emiko Nakamoto.  Emiko Nakamoto is gone now.  Would I like Emiko Johnson?   I don’t know.  But I guess there’s only one way to find out.

Now I need to go buy Sabby a chocolate milkshake.

Love you all!!! ❤️