Seeking Connection

           We are alone. Us people who learned early on that we cannot trust our mothers to hold us in our feelings.     We learned that we cannot connect. We learned from early on the inability to trust in ourselves. We cannot let ourselves go in belief that we will be caught if we fall, so we don't try to fly at all.

           In Jean Liedloff's The Continuum Concept, she writes that when babies learn that they cannot connect with their mothers, they spend their whole life living in this lack, that they desperately need to keep filling with outside addictions. But meanwhile, they are just looking for their lost self-esteem from babyhood. Until acknowledged, they will keep recreating scenarios of loss, and misfortune. This is their normal state of mind, because it is all they know about. Unless they actively face their wounds and change that about them.

           We learned from our loneliness that connection is the most important thing in life. Because we lost it at our most critical time of it's need, we grew up in it's lack. This either destroyed us completely or rendered us to serve others first always. People don't understand it, the need for other's approval so bad that we'd give up our entire identity for it. 

           They mock us for losing our sanity every time someone betrays us. They mock our sensitivity because they don't understand our inner worlds of chaos and mistrust.They may have some of it too, but they manage to cover it with projection onto us as being the weak ones.

            It allows them to go on pretending they are happy. But their happiness comes from denial of their inner shame and unhappiness. They can live with the material world to block their emotional one, but we cannot. We are more truthful. Perhaps we are stronger, haven given up living lies. 

          I just ran into a woman that I know that worked in a government office, and she is noticeably wounded. She is desperately codependent with an exterior of toughness set out to get what she wants. She is a caricature of a person, refusing to connect with anyone on an emotional level, and shouting for her need of autonomy and greatness. Inside she is desperate for motherly connection that she never got, because she cannot smile genuinely. Without cynicism about everything. Because her inner world is all about cynicism. 

           I tested it. I smiled at her and acknowledged her daughter at her side. They both laughed anxiously and rushed away, indicating that human connection was a step too far for them. It didn't even make sense, because when someone asks you a personal question about your life, you see them interested and you usually feel good and want to stay. But to them it was dangerous. 

         Fake smiles, fake love to their children. I wonder when it will all blow up in their faces. Personally, I will not be the one to stick around and help normalize their behavior. I am off to a town where people knowledge my inner existence. Not just my material assets and put-togetherness. That is no longer all I value about myself, it's the inner world that counts to me.

Love,

Strengthening Inside Adoptee