Trauma Resurfaces in Bad Times

I was trying to get my daughter to sleep after mini freaking out at dinner because she woke up too soon from nap and I felt bad. I was just in turmoil because I missed an important phone call and felt thrown in the dark alone again. So I visited my father in order to share in the grief but my mother came and made me feel even more alone. I had no validation for my plight so I felt unreal. It is not enough to read about it sometimes you need live validation for adoption trauma. My so called friends were ignoring me and pretending they cared and it was too much. I finished the container of ice cream and felt invisible with my husband.

Sat in bed with my baby till 1 am, and she was not sleeping even though eyes were drooping. I felt panicked and bad, and hated being alone. While my husband slept. I felt shame and overwhelming sadness at not having my way. Constricted again. I beat myself up for being dramatic. I read that anger was a cover to sadness beyond words, but I didn't want to believe that. I hate being wrapped up in this pain day after day it feels like hell. Hell is not seeing a way out of the pain. I didn't. I wanted to scream but nothing would come out so I stared straight ahead, like being in a cloud of emptiness. It hurt my human soul. Is this what the human animal soul came here for, to try to bind itself with the higher knowledge of truth? It was a hell of a birth. Spiritually and not physically visible. I felt awful for my daughter, knowing no one would see her pain. Transference again. But it was trauma vortex, and I had NO ONE TO SUPPORT ME. I finally felt myself bursting and I became a bit violent, slamming all my anger at those who were restricting me into my daughter's stomach. Her face convulsed in pain, and I shrank back in horror. I got up and directed the anger instead at my husband, slapping his thigh. He burst up and slapped me back with verbal abuse. I shrank back again and had no where to turn. No where to direct my pain but in myself. So I shrieked at him to just stop! And I sat in trauma. I watched my world blur around me and imagined the pain I was feeling. I knew I looked crazy, and felt my husband's judging words: "can't you control your emotions?" and "The emotions you express are made up in your head you are just making yourself crazy." I started sobbing because I felt like I was being annihilated. I wanted to be gone already. I hated myself so much for the pain. I was crazy and wanted to shut myself down. Because my emotions were just not stopping and I hated myself for having them. I felt weak and STUPID. Like a miserable weak woman that had no sense.

I wanted to die. Suicide notions felt so real. So enticing. I knew then and there that I truly needed help. Normal life was not working for me. If I wanted to love myself, I needed to do something different. To change this imbalance in my brain. The flurry of disregulation and cortisol. I imagined myself as a baby left in the hospital. I remembered my mother thinking it was so hilarious when I said the joke of "Hello, are you my mom? Please come get me. I know you didn't mean to leave me in the hospital. Maybe you had something, shopping maybe?" And yet it was so true. They dealt with kids like pets in a zoo the adoptive vultures. Yet I knew my feelings mattered even back then. It whelmed up in me and I started convulsing in overpowering tears that I knew did not come from the now. I muffled it in a pillow. The shrieking seemed to have its own control over me and I couldn't stop it. I made it seem all jolly and dandy during the day, joking about c-ptsd with friends who had no clue. But here it mocked me and was taking me down. Mercilessly. I had no one and my husband could not save me either. I was alone but suddenly empowered. This is what Joe Soll meant by surviving the worst pain and being stronger than ever, being adopted as a newborn. I felt powerful beyond imaginable. I went against the tide, going where nobody wanted to know I did. I was an orphan and only G-d cared. Of my trauma. They were only there when I was up and strong. The vulnerability had to be dealt with by a specialist they thought. I was doing it myself. Holding my tenderest pain and being there for it. It was indefinitely strong. And I knew it was the worst I'd ever feel. I was grateful.

Tomorrow always seems better, but the truth of the pain suffered should never be forgotten. It is real, and without it nothing is true. That is why I can't feel alive, even in joyful times. The pain needs to be in the equation of my life. My daughter knows about this, she is traumatized by it too. I got to not be so hard on myself, and let myself be in my pain.

I am not perfect, I am not even normal. I am crippled with grief that causes me to barely be able to move. We all are, and cannot expect ourselves to move freely. Compassion can only come when we accept ourselves. My daughter will experience unnatural things with me, but that is the truth. She will weather the storm just like I did.