Intrinsic Adoptee Shapes My Life

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Am in a weird mood. Emotional. The way my daughter is growing makes me proud. How she brought me a tissue yesterday when I asked her to bring one. How she remembered the names of different objects. How she seemed to truly get upset when I didn't let her out of her stroller, that she walked the other way. When right before that she was in a good, cooperative mood. How she seems to fall asleep instantly when I shut off all my worrying and stress, despite any struggle during the day. But when I am tense inside she always feels it and it shows up. I am sad because I realize that she loves me and is growing up to become her own person. I am proud of her. And... I love her.

I get emotional over love because it was never really there when I was a kid. Am trying to remember my history, because it popped up in my head today as I lay down next to her trying to drift off to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow, traveling early in the morning to look into moving somewhere. I did positive affirmations, and a song popped in my head. It went, "We are over but I'm still the same and I just miss you... Sometimes." And I imagined my child self sitting alone in my room staring at a book, endless pit of despair in my gut from the house life. How tense it always was. And I thought it was my fault, my shame. It ate me up so I had to run into books. And acting silly and stupid all the time in public. I never would have imagined that there was a way out, that the pain was not normal.

So it is hard for me to feel that now- that I really did go through it. It feels almost part of my psyche. That everything I do mimicks its' undertone- that the world is not safe. Not permanent. Like, adopted like me. And I noticed how all my actions today had an unreal quality... All the chatter I spoke to others, all the waiting for things to go my way. It all felt... Fabricated and not intrinsically me. Because my beginning is shaky.

Or because I am trying to get a new start and change my life, that the excitement in it made me slip back to my old functioning. Who knows. Need sleep.

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