The Blood Debt

Chapter 31

Ayla

There's much to be said about falling in love with your abuser and none of it's particularly positive. What I painfully discovered in that first year of our separation is that enduring Roman's abuse was actually the easier part of my ordeal; coming to terms with the realization that I missed him once it ended... that was the real soul crushing part of it all.

I spend months in anger; anger at the world, anger at the deceit my parents and Roman orchestrate together, anger at my weakness. Eventually all that anger manifests itself in a self-loathing that takes me to a place so dark and unrivaled, that what I've been through in the past pales in comparison. The first few months are the worst and I suspect my misery would've continued for a lot longer if weren't for my roommate Olivia suggesting l doing a pregnancy test. She's watched me hurl the contents on my stomach enough times to suspect that my nausea isn't just stress related like I keep telling her.

I live much like I did when Roman took me so long ago, oblivious to the passing time, letting one day weave into another as I wallow in my misery. My long anticipated emancipation feels nothing like I'd hoped it would, the reality instead feels like a different kind of imprisonment. Even in my suffering, the irony isn't lost on me; Roman's absence brings the same kind of pain his presence had once brought. While admitting it is never easy, nor something I ever stop long enough to dwell on in those days, for fear of having to come to terms with something too uncomfortable to admit, it does get me working. It's a few nights a week at an Irish pub in Brooklyn, a gig that Dallas gets me after calling to tell me how sorry she is about Roman and I parting ways. The more determined I am to leave my past behind, the more my past finds a way to intrude into my new life; a life where I have no money, apart from what Nora has given me, and when faced with the reality that she's done way more for me than I'm comfortable accepting, it means I can't be choosy or proud about where help comes from.

Finding a reason to keep going in those early months, while I try to navigate my survival in a world so different to the one I knew, comes in the form of finding my birth mother. The first thing I do after filing a name change petition with the Civil Court, is to create a profile on the Kansas Adoption Reunion Registry. When I call the 1-888 number a few days later to make sure I've done everything I need to, a sweet old lady tells me that if my birth mom is on the registry, it will save me a lot of time because we'll be matched based on the information we've both provided. She tells me that the process will take anywhere between 7-10 business days, and that when a match is confirmed, the birth mother will be alerted that the adoptee is also now on the registry. She warns me that this process and the registry itself is entirely voluntary and despite thousands being on it, there's approximately 5-8 reunions a month.

I get an alert exactly 10 business days later.

Suddenly Roman, my mom, my uncertain future... everything becomes inconsequential, a hiccup on the road to my new life with my real family, or at least that's what I tell myself. But my confidence turns to skepticism in the deafening silence that follows. Suddenly I'm not so certain or hopeful, in fact I'm downright scared. I know that my birth mom received the same alert I did. I reason that this is what I was hoping for, but for her, I'm a ghost from the past that she may have lost hope of ever finding again long ago.

I decide to reach out to her myself after waiting a month. My message is only a few lines; a little formal but simple, telling her I'd like to meet her. I type and delete over and over again until my doubts bring me to the point of uncertainty. I hit send before I change my mind completely. I don't hear anything for more than a month: it's the quietest month of my life, and in that quiet I begin to seriously consider that maybe we're never going to be one of those eight that reunite - ever, but there's a small part of me that hangs onto a glimmer of hope, trying to convince myself that until she says no there's still a chance, and then she does. The timing couldn't be more poignant - the email lands in my inbox the day after I find out I'm pregnant.  I don't even recognise it at first because there's a strange username made up of letters and numbers that makes me think it's spam, but then I spot the Department of Children and Families domain.