I've Looked At Love From Both Sides Now, From Give And Take, And Still Somehow, It's Love's Illusions I Recall, I Really Don't Know Love At All

--"Both Sides Now", Joni Mitchell

When people claim that I'm a usually happy person it's because they only see one side of me. I try to pass myself off as the mother of the group, the person who takes care of everyone else, the hostess, because that's what I was always taught a person should do in any given situation. I don't know how to be any other way. So when people meet me for the first time, they always seem to comment that I managed to put a bit of sunshine in their day and, for the most part, I take it as a compliment. It gladdens me that people around me respond kindly to my personality. I would take it as a sign I hadn't learned a thing from my parents if people remarked I had put a damper on their day or even treated me indifferently. "It's not enough to keep the bike in good working condition, Breanne. It needs to be rode everyday," my daddy always says. It's not enough to think of yourself as being a good person; you've got to use it make other people better than they were before has always been a philosophy I've tried to live by.

Yet the Breanne people don't see is the gal who gets down on herself when confronted with all the dreams she had hoped to accomplish and may never get a chance to. I mean--so far I've led a resplendent life, more than most could hope for. Little tweaks, though, always seem to creep in. I wish I had been a little more patient with my parents. I wish I hadn't loused things up with Shelly. I wish I hadn't been caught up in being so correct all the time. Looking back now, I was happy, but I could have been happier if I hadn't pushed so hard for everything, if I hadn't been so pig-headed.

However, the biggest regret I had was the fact that, even with all this love and happiness to spare, I felt a lot of it was going to waste. I'd dreamed all my life of being a mother. From the time I was a little girl to the time the doctor told me it would never happen, all I could think of was how I hoped to be half the parent my mother was and how I would spoil that little girl or boy rotten. When I thought it was done and my hopes were dashed, I admit I gave up on the dream rather easily. Everyone kept telling me I had other options, that I could still have my dream. But my thought was if it can't happen the way I want to happen, then I don't want it to happen at all. I kept myself moving faster than a sheep at a wolves' convention, busying myself in work, with my friends, with my family, all in the hope that I could forget what I was yearning for. Everyone could see it was a struggle, but, to their credit, they allowed me my folly. Every so often the idea would creep back in, but I always tucked it away, too stubborn to give it serious thought.

Well, like they say, "you can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make them biscuits," just like you can tell someone like me that I can't have children, but that's not going to stop me from becoming a mother. It's who I am. I thought I could be happy loving the people I already have, but I can't help but think there's a love I don't know at all yet. I want that. I want it badly. I'm a happy person and I think it's God's plan for me to be able to share that happiness with someone who is special and unique to me and Greg in his or her own little way. With the new year, I've decided that it's time to stop being stubborn and start chasing that pesky dream again.

We have an orientation with an adoption agency at the end of the month.

Breanne