Is it jealousy?

I sometimes have feelings that make little sense. Then at other times, they make sense in context, but cause me so much shame I just pretend they don't make sense.

I hate to admit this even to myself, but I am harboring a burgeoning jealousy of A's biological parents. They have almost infinitely more rights than I do at this point, and I am just annoyed by that. I would not ever trade my life for theirs, but they do have something I will never have. Even if they lose their rights, they are still A's mother and father.

I will never get to be A's only mom, no matter what happens. There will always be a line, however tenuous, that connects her to these other people, other families. She's connected to people with pasts and human mistakes and roads I wouldn't dare travel. Someday she will have perspective on that, I can only hope.

I can hope to give her good skills for life, but I can't give her my genes, my laugh, or any of the good things in my own heritage. I feel bad for the strange way we have to graft her into the family tree. As much as I love her as if she were my own flesh, her history diverges from mine in strange ways and travels back through unknown destinations.

I love her, but she isn't all the way mine yet. There is always the chance that the courts will make a drastic reversal and I could lose her forever, and I would never know what happened to her. I'm jealous that I have to face that fear through no fault of my own. I'm a good parent to A, but I'm not blood, and blood trumps a lot. It doesn't matter how good of a person I am or how good my intentions are. It is going to turn out how it turns out, and I have to wait and see if I get to be a real, legal mom.