@PeppyPatti

No, I moved out about 10 years ago, as sad as that is.  I always wanted to move out but I had no where to go and not enough money to move somewhere by myself.  The negative opinion of myself was pretty high back then.  I didn't have any close friends and getting a proper job was hard because the thought of applying and having to be 'judged' at an interview was very difficult to get past.  I found a job at a local community centre because they really needed someone with IT skills.  I started as a volunteer (as part of a unemployment govt program) but they loved having someone there who could fix their computer and network problems as well as improved their current systems and create new ones.  So they offered to pay me to I would stay. It wasn't a lot of hours but I liked it there and felt valued, which was rare for me, so I stayed for 18 years.  Not the best career or financial decision, but it felt like the best I could hope for.  It also wasn't the best 'mental' decision because it just fed into my low self esteem because I avoided people even more because they would inevitably ask about 'who do you live with' forcing me to lie or humiliate myself... and I never could bring myself to lie.

Every time my adoptive mother introduced me to some one, she would say "This is my son M..., he's adopted!"  I always hated that and she got really cranky if I said anything about it... like I was being annoying!  So I put up with it.  Some people would then ask "Has ever tried to find his birth mother?"  Her tone would then change and she would say in a very passive aggressive manner "He can do whatever he wants, but if he finds her, that b#$ch will never be welcome in my house!"  So I grew up afraid to find my bio-mother because of the fear of being rejected again as well as the thought that is was going to cause drama and conflict if I did.  To this day, I still haven't told her about my birth family and never plan to.  I haven't even told my brother (the one my adoptive parents adopted after me) because of fear he will tell my mother.  So i keep it to myself.

Both my adoptive parent were heavy smokers.  And I mean HEAVY!  You could walk past their bedroom a 3am and you would see 2 little red glows.  I didn't mean they were awake by the way.  The carpet on each side of the bed, near the head end was pretty much all black from burns of lit cigarettes from when they fell asleep.  I always complained about the smoking around me as I hated the smell as well as the taste of the smoke.  They would just laugh as I coughed and tried to wave the smoke away... until it got tedious over the years then they would get really annoyed and tell me to stop being stupid, or angrily move their cigarette to the opposite hand.  My mother did anyway... my father just ignored me.  As soon as I was old enough to eat meals in my room, I did.  And I just stayed in my room while they watched TV, or I went outside just to get away from the smoke.  It's probably little wonder the desire to find my biological mother was so strong... but so was the fear.

So i know there's a chance that letter just got lost, but knowing my adoptive mother as well as I do, i'm sure she would have never given it to me anyway.  I see no point in asking because she would just deny all knowledge and I can't prove she ever got it, but also because even if I persisted and found out she did hide it from me, I would get so angry that at the very least I would tell her I never want to see or hear from her ever again!  And that would take a lot of self control.  So I keep it all to myself.

I'm happy you got something out of my story.  It certainly is quite an experience and I think explains more about me and the way I am than anything else I could say.  I know what you mean about the 50s reset button.  Mine was more or less forced on me by my health issues but I had already found my biological family a year before so I think i was on the way to making some big changes to move past my previous self who just buried everything emotional and never dealt with anything and just hid from the world I guess.  It's nice to be finally peeking my head out!  It's great that you feel your own "rebirth" at a similar time in life.  It doesn't remove everything from the past but it does lighten the load a lot.