Feeling Real and Loved By Birth Family's Importance

                The more u know your self and face what happened to you when you were a child, the more humble you can be because you KNOW yourself and don't try to cover up with shame.

                 I realized this yesterday, and I wrote on Facebook that the more I feel real and important, the more I understand why God would waste His time giving to me and love me. I dare you to call me narcissistic and selfish. I meant that I felt more real and less hiding inside of who I was, my core shame for having been adopted and subconscious belief that I am not lovable so I am unworthy of life and love. Meeting my birth father made me realize how much I meant to him, and it made me proud of my birth heritage of being "part of the family" as he told me. I suddenly felt I had worth, and was real. My heart tinged. For the past three days I could not stop thinking about my birth father and family, and sometimes I felt an urge to speak with them and call them. It was almost like a homesick thing, where I missed my family and felt alone and like I could not go on without them. But I pushed these thoughts away with the logic of knowing that he really truly loved me. Happiness spread through me. But the yearning to know them and get "validated" again persisted. I guess this is what a wounded narcissistic baby injury feels like, the need to keep getting attention from others. I never let myself get it from others because I told myself I was not worthy, and had to be PERFECT and give in to others to be worthy. And then I was unhappy inside chronically. Now, since I found my birth family, I have concrete proof for my self-doubt that I AM important and matter. It does not take away my being adopted, but I now don't feel as ashamed for subconsciously not being kept by my birth family. He said they wanted us, that us leaving were the WORST thing that happened in his life. I'm sure there were other bad things, but it touches me that this one sticks out in his mind the most. 

            I also wrote on Facebook about how hidden dysfunction is the worst pain to deal with in families, and I experienced it by being adopted and not having my trauma validated and so it caused me lifetime shame. I do wonder about other family hidden dysfunction besides adoption secrecy exists in the world, and how people feel in those scenarios. I feel sad that I will never understand how it feels to grow up IN your birth family and experience rejection of your feelings, and be traumatized in that the people who are your kin, and SUPPOSED to love you and treat you as a respectable and worthy person, utterly do not. I question how these circumstances exist, and why I had to be adopted in order to find out the devastation of losing everyone I held dear and needed in my psyche, to recognize the value of true love and belonging.

             

            I still feel unworthy a lot of the time, and it is a battle between feeling angry and unable to function when things go wrong and I don't know how to express my feelings, because I am like a child inside that did not feel seen and was shamed for having feelings, and telling myself that I AM worthy of getting my way and I CAN feel my feelings and have them heard by myself and or a loving person or G-d. So feeling selfish and narcissistic is something very familiar to me, because I constantly put myself down for having feelings, and the more I realize that I am worthy of living and being HUMAN, because I see that my beginning counted, I can let my childish hurts out and able to be there. This is what I mean by by knowing your pains and hurts and trauma, you can face them and become more humble by accepting the childish needs for attention, love, admiration, and crying and having feelings validated by others.

          I don't know if he accepts everything about me. But I still feel more whole. It's like the old Orphan Annie song about the parents they never knew, "...Maybe they've made me a closet of clothes. Maybe he's rich....I don't really care, as long as they're mine." I don't know if he loves every music I love. Or if he thinks I'm a good dancer. Or if I love his taste in music. Or if he accepts my lifestyle. Or if I accept his. But this is a feeling I never felt before unconditional love. I finally feel like SOMEBODY'S. He wants to be my father. He is my father. He wants to make up for all the suffering and pain in my life without him. He felt bad and guilty about it. He owned up to it being because he did not show his love for me as my father. He did not show that I was needed and worthwhile in my parent's eyes. He did not take away the pain of being a stray in a strange world. That everyone made me feel alone because they could not show me that I was needed with proof. That my adoptive parents could not give to me the security of having not have been a mistake. That their "we wanted you" story always rang hollow and a hard pill to swallow in my life. That I did not feel proud of who I was, without the confidence that I came from SOMEONE. The blank, ignored for other's peace question hung in the air like a deadly weapon. Slashing my sense of peace and security. Forcing me to put up shields to protect myself from the cruelty of a child unknown, but chosen to fulfill a role in everyone else's lives. Forcing me to have no sense of self-worth, having to shut off all my primary needs for recognition of who I am. Yes, I am reunited with my birthright, and I found a place to call my own in this vast, shrouded world. I found my starting point, my proof of being birthed. I am real, and now I can stop chasing my mirrors that make me see who I am. I am a-ok, and I don't need to match up to what someone that I want to love me wants to see. We can live side by side, in our own rights of taste and interests. No one will be annihilated if they are not in exact alignment with another's view. We are separate beings, and my birth father has shown me that I can let go and feel secure in his everlasting and never forgotten unconditional love of me. And all that I have become. He will never not love me.