Conquering Chaos (12 page)

Part of the reason we decided to keep working with MTV was because we wanted all those
adopted kids out there to see what their parents might have gone through, and how
much love they put into their decision. For parents like us, it was the biggest act
of love we could have done.

We want to be available to help people make the right decision. Not just to help the
birth parents, but to help the children who are being brought into this world, through
no choice of their own, and whose futures are at the mercy of adults’ decisions.

We’ve had many young people approach us with questions about adoption. And our response
is always, “Look at your own life, think about all of the options, and choose the
one that’s right for you.” We don’t want to push anyone into anything.

We hear a lot of fear of adoption. People think they won’t be strong enough to go
through with it. To that we say, “You don’t know how strong you are.” We didn’t think
we were strong enough, but we followed what we knew was right, and in the end we were
able to step up to what we believed in.

As for the people who still struggle with misconceptions about the adoption process
and the motives of birth parents, we have two messages we want to spread. First, things
have changed so much since the 1950s. Our adoption experience wasn’t secretive or
shameful. It was transparent and supportive, and we had control every step of the
way.

Second, adoption is not an act of neglect or irresponsibility. The parent who chooses
adoption is
choosing
to give their child a chance. That goes for the parents who choose closed adoptions
and even the ones who make the choice and never look back. Even for them, adoption
is an act of love. They didn’t get an abortion. They didn’t abandon the baby to neglect
or worse. They made the conscious decision to put that child where there was a better
chance of care and happiness.

The only point we really push is this: No matter what decision you go with, you’re
putting the child’s needs and necessities before what you want. Because what you naturally
want will almost always be to keep that baby. But that desire of yours doesn’t always
match up with what’s best for the child. You have to keep that in mind. You have to
always make sure that you’re doing what’s right for the person whose life is in your
hands.

One of the weirdest misconceptions about adoption is that after the birth parents
return home without the child in their arms, they shove the whole experience in the
closet like a painful memory best forgotten. You see this play out in movies and stories
about adoption all the time: An adopted kid grows up and tracks down his or her birth
parents, and the parents act like a ghost has appeared on their doorstep. Like they
haven’t thought about that child in years. As if the birth parents’ post-adoption
experience is a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

After the custody papers were signed and we watched Carly go home with another family,
our lives didn’t just bounce back to normal. How could anyone expect us to dive back
into our crazy misbehaving teenager lives, drinking and smoking and partying? After
all that we’d just been through, were we really supposed to just pick up where we
left off like nothing had ever happened?

No way. No freaking way. We couldn’t have done that if we’d wanted to. And the important
thing was that we didn’t want to at all. As Carly drove off with two wonderful parents,
headed for the safe, secure and comfortable life we wished to God we would have been
able to give her, we knew there was only one way to channel the storm of emotions
raging inside of us. We were still just seventeen, but we sure didn’t feel like it.
From that moment on, we dedicated ourselves to becoming the kind of people our daughter
would grow up to be proud of. It was time to turn our lives around.

Tyler:

Going back to life after Carly was really difficult. I remember being in Cate’s room
after it happened and just lying there, miserable, for hours. No matter how many positive
things we can say about the decision to place our daughter for adoption, there’s no
getting around the grief and loss we experienced after we left without our daughter.
Dawn had told us it was important to jump back into life as soon as possible. But
that’s a hard thing to do when that one thing that happened has changed everything
in your life, and everything about you.

We did try. After we’d sat around depressed for awhile, I turned to Catelynn and said,
“Let’s go hang out. Let’s see what Jeff’s up to.”

Cate started crying. “I can’t,” she said. When I asked why not, she said, “I can’t
just go out and have fun. I feel like I should be miserable, and distraught. I feel
like I shouldn’t be going out and having fun after what we just did for Carly.”

I knew exactly what she meant. The goal was to get back into our lives and be normal,
but it was so hard.

Catelynn:

After Carly was born, I stayed at Tyler’s for about a week before I tried to go home.
When I did, I got into a huge fight with Tyler’s dad and my mom about the adoption.
We weren’t even close to making peace on that front. So I left again that night and
went back to Tyler’s. I stayed at his place for awhile. Him and his mom were my main
support system at the time.

I never had any regrets or second thoughts. I knew where Carly was and I had peace
with it, and I was comforted by the fact that we’d made things open, so it wasn’t
like I’d never see her again. But it was still incredibly painful.

You have to go through that phase of grief and loss. Your mind is racing. They say
that in a strange way, even though you know your child is safe and sound, your feelings
are similar to what you would go through if she had died. She was there in my arms,
and then she wasn’t, and I couldn’t go and get her. I had just given birth to her,
and all the mom parts of me were active. But she wasn’t there. I couldn’t see her.
I couldn’t check on her. I couldn’t hear her. It was an enormous loss to deal with.

And on top of it there was that sense of, “I shouldn’t be happy.” Whether it was to
punish myself or to try or because I just didn’t know how to express the right emotions
for this serious loss, I don’t know. But I had this strong feeling that I should stay
at home, be sad and not do anything for a couple of months. In reality, yes, you’re
supposed to go out and do things and have fun. Every counselor gives you that advice.
But it’s very difficult for a birth parent to do at first. It took at least a couple
of months to get back into the groove.

Tyler:

We knew it was important to try to follow the advice and get ourselves out there.
So we dragged ourselves out of the house, met up with our friends, had a good time
and everything. But it wasn’t the same as before. We couldn’t just go out and start
drinking and doing drugs. It was impossible. We were so impacted by this long, drawn-out
experience that everything felt different to us.

After a couple of weeks we finally talked about it with each other. Cate said, “Isn’t
it weird how when we hang out with certain friends, we don’t laugh at their jokes
anymore? Have you noticed that?”

“Yes!” I said. “Totally!” We had this whole conversation about all of these weird
changes we felt had happened. There were so many differences between our lives before
and after Carly that we never could have imagined. Things we thought were funny before
just weren’t anymore. Things that used to be fun before didn’t interest us now. Our
friends would invite us out to a party, and we’d look at each other and have this
awkward realization that we’d rather just go home and watch movies.

Things changed for us. Our desires and ideals were different. Once we realized that,
we had to figure out how to mesh our new outlook on life with the friends who hadn’t
experienced this life-changing ordeal that we’d experienced. People thought once we’d
chosen adoption we’d dive back in like, “Cool! Time to go back to getting wasted.”
That’s not what happens. Your brain doesn’t let it happen. So we had to make compromises
like, “We’re not going to go party all night, but we’ll hang out for a bit.”

Then we’d go home and watch movies and be like, “What’s wrong with us? Are we seventeen
years old or fifty?”

Catelynn:

When you go through such an adult experience, it forces you to grow up. Dealing with
the pregnancy and making an adoption plan put us in a very grown-up position, and
after so many months in that position, we got used to looking at the world in a more
grown-up way. It was just all of the thinking, all of the hard decisions, all the
sacrifices. We really became like adults in those nine months. We realized how life
works. Stuff is real. Serious things happen.

Not only did we have a more realistic and mature understanding of the way life worked,
but we had a new understanding of its meaning and purpose. Doing what we did for Carly
made us appreciate the makings of our own lives more. It made us realize that we needed
to do something more with ourselves. We weren’t going to just place our child in adoption
and then go back and go on being losers, doing drugs and flunking out of school. That
was out of the question.

Placing Carly wasn’t just a gift, it was a promise. And that promise was, “We’re going
to become the kind of people who deserve to be parents.” We were going to make our
lives ten times better than what they were, so that when we were ready to have another
child, we’d be in the position to say “This child will be safe, secure, and happy
in our home.”

Of course, we had to figure out how to make that happen. Before Carly, I had no real
goals or dreams other than being a mom and a wife someday. Now I knew that I needed
to see drastic changes in my life to make that come true. But we didn’t have a roadmap
or anything. So we sat down and started making a plan for ourselves.

Tyler:

We were still reeling with our grief and loss, but we started trying to turn our pain
into motivation. It was like, “We feel this pain, but we’re not going to feel it for
nothing.” Instead of letting it drag us down, we channeled it into this mission of
turning our lives around.

The first thing was to set our goals. Before Carly, my main goal in life was to not
get suspended. I knew I needed to aim a little higher than that if I wanted to make
something of my life. So we sat down and thought, “What do we need to do?” For our
ultimate goal, we wanted to get our lives to the point where if Catelynn got pregnant
again, we would be ready and qualified to be parents. That meant we had to overcome
all those “cons” in our lives that made us decide to place Carly in adoption. What
did we have to do to make ourselves ready to be parents?

Honestly, a big part of our plan was just turning into normal people. A lot of that
might sound simple to others: Graduating high school. Getting a job. Getting a cell
phone. Getting a car. Going to college. But coming from our backgrounds, all of those
goals would be major achievements. And they were all benchmarks we definitely had
to hit before we could consider ourselves ready for a child.

Catelynn:

The first main goal was graduating high school. Before Carly, I just didn’t care about
my education. I didn’t plan on going to college or have any idea what I wanted to
do with my life. But as soon as she was born, I said, “I’m going to graduate high
school, go to college, and do things that will benefit society. I’m not going to be
some loser who’s high on drugs and fighting.” That was it. Tyler and I just sort of
looked at each other and said, “Time to pull our pants up and get this done.”

I had failed all of middle school, and we both messed up ninth grade. Then, obviously,
we were dealing with the pregnancy and adoption. But we were able to turn things around
by going to an alternative school called Riverview, which was amazing for us. We were
a little behind schedule — Tyler was three months late, and I was a year late — but
we stuck to it and graduated with our diplomas.

We didn’t have to stop hanging out with our friends or anything. We still liked them
and we knew they hadn’t gone through what we’d been through. We’d go out and do bonfires
and have a good time, but it just wasn’t as much. After Carly, we’d do all the same
things but in a different way. We’d have a beer and enjoy the company, but we wouldn’t
get smashed and pass out. We stopped being the last people at the party and started
going home at twelve thirty.

Tyler:

My very first job was at a pizza shop, running deliveries. I was excited about it
at first! But my boss was a pizza nazi. He was in the military for five years, and
he got it in his head that the place had to be run like a military base. There were
all these things we had to do: When we clocked in, we had to scream “DRIVER IN!” And
when we left, “DRIVER OUT!” He’d scream, “PEPPERONI!” and I’d have to scream back,
“ROGER! PEPPERONI!” Dude, it’s not war. It’s pizza!

Everyone who worked there was miserable. I kept asking the other guys, “How do you
put up with this for this long?”

“It’s not that bad,” they all said. “You just learn to listen and keep your mouth
shut.” Well, assuming you didn’t skip the first half of this book, you can probably
guess where this is going.

The Pizza Nazi had one of his sons working there, and the kid was, well, a little
awkward. We didn’t talk much. But one day when I was folding boxes I asked him, “So
you must get paid pretty well working for your dad, right?”

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t get paid.”

“Dude!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here, then?”

“I don’t know. This is just what I do.” Turned out this kid went home every day from
school, dropped off his backpack, and came to slave away for the Pizza Nazi for nothing.