Patience, my love. Patience.
Not only is it a virtue, but successfully practicing it greatly reduces the amount of stress in one's life.  I am naturally anxious.  Wait wait wait... that's not right.  "I have accumulated so much stress from living in the future that it feels normal to be tense these days."  Yup, that's it.  I have dreams for my future, and I know what you're thinking "atta girl, Elise!  Be a dreamer!"  I know what you mean but, I think I tend to take it a little too far.  A lot of times my dreams are a little far fetched, which pushes me to work harder and acheive more, however it also means that I am not reaching most of my dreams.  I have a few different dreams of how I want to be living in a few years.  One has me in a little cabin in the woods, another is on a ranch with acres and acres of land, and another still reveals my materialistic side....  I guess having several dreams allows room for happiness in different situations, but I fear always landing in the mediocre. 

The dream that plagues my mind often these days, and has been since I discovered boys, is finding my "true love".  If you have read any of my earlier blogs, you may know this well already.  I have not had a relationship last much longer than 6 months, by my own fault or no.  This may have been to my benefit, since even the shortest one pierced my soul when it ended.  I was young (I still am) and being in relationships shouldn't have been as important to me as it was.  As I am slightly older now, I approach the time in my life where I can actually start looking for a long-term partner.  I still have other things to focus on such as education, my spirituality, and the relationship with my family, but I can't seem to help but look for someone I want to spend my life with.

The qualities I'm looking for in a man are mostly centered around being cared for emotionally and physically.  I want this man to love me and no one else for all that I am, forever.  I want him to be able to take care of me and, if it happens, a family.  I want him to believe what I believe as closely as possible, and be accepting of our differences.  I want to be able to enjoy nature, travel, and adventure with him, living life to the fullest with no regrets. 

I'm waiting for myself to stop freaking out about waiting.  Just be patient, Elise! Jeez!

After 19 years apart, I have finally reached the point in my life where I want to contact my biological parents. My parents (I will always refer to my adoptive parents as "my parents) were always very open about discussing my adoption, even reading me children's books about it on each anniversary of the day I came to live with them. I have an older brother, by 5 years, who was also adopted but from a different family. We were both adopted at about 6 months old so neither of us have any memory of our former lives.
Years passed and I matured, coming to understand the depth of my past bit by bit. I began to ask more questions about my birthparents. I found out that my bio-mother left a knitted sweater and bonnet and my bio-dad had left me his guitar. I had always thought that guitar was my Dad's since he played it a few times and kept it in his office. I looked inside the little compartment and found a picture of a boy in a red sox baseball uniform, wearing Converse high tops in classic black. He looked a lot like me and eventually it hit me....
Another time, soon after, I became even more curious and went thruogh some files. I found out a little bit more about my bio-mom's side of the family and their health problems. In the same folder I found a letter from my bio-dad to me. It was three pages, handwritten. It sounded very heartfelt and it made me feel an emotion I wasn't quite sure of.
Now that I am a legal adult and somewhat settled down for a while in college, I have increased my efforts to find my biological parents and speak with them. For a while the adoption agency didn't have much of a lead, but just yesterday I got a call back from them with the name, email, and phone number of my bio-mom.

I have no idea what to do. Obviously, the first attempt to communicate would be taken through email, but I can't think of what to say... I don't know whether to make it short and to the point, or a life story......

What do I do?