So Many Lonely People

              All my life I felt like a nobody. I never thought I would amount. I thought I was something to forget, not quite looking into. Shame and self hate was always strong in my feelings, that I had to do everything to push it away.

           I can't expect myself to suddenly to happy and at peace.

           I honestly don't know how anyone expected me to be a mother.

           The funny thing is, they don't know what a good mother means. My mom never knew there was anything wrong with me that she could actually help change. She thought it was all in my head and I was damaged because of where I came from. A schizophrenic mother.

             What is a good mother? I always thought that anyone who had a child must be a good mother, that it automatically certified them to be good. My sister in law said: my mother was a mother she has experience, when I told her that you need to be careful with a baby's emotions when holding them. In my mind I remembered her throwing my husband in a dark room to cry alone, and how that shut off his trust in humanity. So I scoffed at the notion that my mother in law was a good mother.

             A mother is someone who has a child. It doesn't mean they are suddenly perfectly altruistic in the way they need to to take care of that child. They can be selfish and have ego blocks that cut them off from hearing other people's emotions, including their child's. And if they are selfish enough they are capable of justifying it and pretending their baby won't remember or care. 

            I am openly admitting that I don't always let my baby's emotions get seen. I don't validated her half as much as she needs. I am so numb that watching her cry just depresses me, even though I know it heals her. I am selfish and needy, and my needs to be held and cared for are starving too.

             My father in law screams at my 5 year old nephew to shut up when he has tantrums. This may seem normal to allot of people, because children screaming are annoying. To me or other aware people, we know it's wrong and disrespectful to the child. He is old fashioned and thinks children should be seen and not heard, although he complained in the same conversation that his mother made him rock his younger siblings when he was that age and he felt mistreated. He still won't treat his offspring any better, and is oblivious to their pain. That's what happens when a person shuts off their pain.

              Richard Grannon says that it's important to sit with your pain, because if you don't, it rots and turns into something icky and worse. Such as shame being ignored, turning into anger and projection at injustices that you can displace to get rid of the ickiness in yourself. For example when I tried to explain my pain to my biological sister after complaining why we don't have a closer relationship, she told me she doesn't feel that way and is happy enough to see me as a friend just like the many others she has. She told me she never felt resentment or any negativity about being adopted, on the contrary she felt lucky to grow up with a normal family. Although she did feel bad at one point about being different, she utilized it to her advantage by feeling special. To me it was a punch in the gut because I was sick of feeling special and just wanted to feel like my differences and feeling shame was okay, and she further told me I had no right to feel them. I was just trying to get validated but she was not able to. And I was unconscious about knowing that not everyone can validate me.

            My daughter is so weak and helpless she cannot validate herself. When she feels ignored she feels horrible, but cannot cry on her own because she doesn't trust her gut feelings yet because I am not there enough for her. At almost a year she is still fully reliant on me, and clings to me like a lifeline. Nobody understands how much my system is screwed up, on the contrary they see my codependent behavior in public as indicators of how I am a number one candidate for a healthy and emotionally stable child. They are numb to the clues of my unstable emotional life, and if they get close enough to see my idiosyncrasies such as moodiness, not keeping my word, and avoiding intimacy they would just think it's normal and humanly just like them. So I would be off their pedestal of superiority that they see me as from far.

           Gosh I just wish the world would open their eyes more to the emotions lurking within.

Adoptee Crazy