The Strong One

          Since I was a child I can remember being alone and feeling alone. I always longed for someone or something to hold on to that will last, because I knew subconsciously that there was nothing to rely on.

          Every person I met I wondered what they were hiding from me, and I doubted that I would be able to trust them. I shunned new people, did not trust in their kindness. It made no sense to me that anyone would be kind to me. I felt I was damaged goods, that nobody would want to take a second look at me if they saw what was inside. Inside it was just empty, screaming, gaping, festering, angry rawness. Nobody was to know, because I could not risk the shame and murder of myself if I was rejected once again. I say now once again, but then I did not know why it was like this, I did not know the reason I felt this way. It just covered my life like a huge black darkness. It was impossible to escape it. 

          But Now I will open up to it and own it. It has taken too long for me to expose it, and my heart is aching to have it heard. The crashing storms in me are begging for rest, for allowance to be there. I know I don't make sense, but feelings don't always make sense and they need to get out. I am revisited by the shame and vulnerability felt when those people in my life mocked me for my emotions, and laughed at me when I tried to cry and say how hurt I was. I screamed my guts out and nobody heard, It might as well have meant they didn't care. So here I am, once again, taking a small chance at opening those wounds and trying to let them be heard. 

         Jean Liedloff's book The Continuum Concept explains it very well. When baby's are missing their "in-arms" stage with their mothers, which happens from when they are born until crawling age or later depending on the child and how much they need it, they go about life with this endless longing for it, and trying to fulfill this need through everything they do, be it drugs or attention and adoration from their lovers or friends. It is this endless need for attention, Our society definitely doesn't help with there being many instructions of how to parent, teaching to put the baby down in strollers and cribs or they'll be "spoiled" while they cry endlessly hoping for the mercy of that person to finally pick them up. She says babies brain are not fully formed until they are 9 months, as it takes 18 months from conception for a brain to be fully formed. Therefore, when the child is placed on a bed or in strollers for most of their time they cannot develop as much emotional intimacy with their caregivers, which promotes the optimal physical development. These children grow up already lacking in a secure sense of self, and therefor they are susceptible to all of society's brainwash of how to be a good mother because they do not trust their own instincts of how to be so. We can see that it is inherent in a 2 year child's psyche to nurture babies, because they are drawn to dolls or other babies that they want to nurture. Therefore, it is outrageous to think that one needs a parenting book to teach them how to love a child. Perhaps it is also due to society's view that emotional care can only go so far, and that a child needs to be up to par in education rather than making sure they are doing well in their emotional life. The emotional health is often taken for granted, despite the fact that misbehavior in school often stems from problems at home. People like to blame the child because they don't want to say they're own doing of hurting the child. Therefore often emotional neglect happens, and it's a vicious cycle, with the child growing up and doing it to their own children.

          That is what happened to me as a child, my emotions we're ignored in school and at home, leaving me in a frenzy of self-hate. I refused to allow myself credit for any thing I created. 

          If I would have continued this way on this path, I would have become self destructive, not allowing myself to achieve anything because of my lack of self-worth and foundation. Liedoff says that the reason people develop mental illness is typically because they are subconsciously trying to fulfill their "in-arms" needs which were never met. Same goes for many people in hospitals, retracting sicknesses chronically. They need that sense of being taken care of, and they yearn for the attention, even when it is being paid for and cold. 

          The two people in a relationship will try to get the mothering they never received from one another, that is why there is so much babying and pushing and pulling going on in relationships.

          A much greater percentage than average are the nimber of adoptees in clinician centers, and this fits with what Liedloff is saying about what happens when a person lacks the "in-arms" stage in the first year of life.

          Joe Soll, author of Adoption Healing, says that if adoptees do not have their feelings of sadness  validated and heard before the age of 5-7, when their logic kicks in, there causes a split in personality and fragmentation from the pain and hurt, which get's buried out of shame. They become split off from their emotions, which are all coiled together in a "rubber ball," and when instigated, can erupt all at once so the person feels a storm load of anger, shame, hurt, sadness, vulnerability, etc. He suggests that to heal. one should pick apart each feeling in a conscientious manner and study it.

          It has been a long journey of trying to hide my shame, and then working on letting it go and forgiving myself for it. It was not my fault, I was just caught in the tracks of unheard and stuck grief, and my mother was unaware or didn't know how to handle it/me, I was pushed and manipulated to behave, and forced to do things that I was not ready to, and I had no one behind me sticking up or defending me. My child self tried to fight, but ultimately was drowned out by all authority figure around me and I was too young to realize they were wrong.

          One thing I was always good at was writing, and expressing myself ironically. I always had a hard time putting feelings and stories that made sense on paper though, all my writing was confused and extreme in ideas. Now I see it was a child at play that expressed a mixed up reality, all jumbled from my confused feelings covered by society's expectations of normalcy. I just didn't have it, so my confused thinking came through, rendering it in-construable. But now, I am doing myself the service of voicing my creativity, and letting it go. I have nothing to lose, and only love and self-acceptance to gain.

          Incidentally, it is my birthday today and I am giving myself a chance to be reborn into the person I really am. I was always tough on the exterior. but so very broken inside. I believe admitting that makes me stronger than I ever really was. I am on a journey of loving myself, and accepting my inner truth.

         Thank you for reading this, whoever is out there, and I hope you can gain some inspiration to let down your own guard finally.

          Love,
          An Adoptee