An Adoptee and Her Child Bonding in Love

She feels my love. We are connected. The realization hit me strongly today and I was filled with awe and shock. This was what I was unsure of, all my parenthood. The paying attention to her feelings, wanting to see her cry and express her pain, trying to understand what made her want to distract herself from reality and tune out... it was all an emotional upheaval for me. Where every day I worried about what she was going through. But, to listen to my own words, everything I see in her is a reflection of my own inner world. So if I don’t trust others, I will assume she doesn’t either. And so that is what I was doing all along, trying to make her feel good when in fact I should have been paying more attention to myself... and then I could focus on her.

And how much stress I was carrying. Last night, with the pain of the thought of rejection from my love who had not gotten back to me in three weeks, I had stayed on the internet browsing Instagram to distract myself. Suddenly, it all hit me how much I missed him and I started crying like a baby, with hiccups and short breaths. I couldn’t believe that he was leaving, after all the months of love we shared together, and the confusion and ups and downs. But all in all, the last words I remembered him saying from our physical meet up, two months ago, was that he loved me so much but he didn’t trust me. Because I had slept with a different man, and it showed I didn’t love him. I was so flabbergasted, because I truly had not done it because I didn’t love him, I did it to run away from my pain of not having him. And fearing he had left for good. I had no way of knowing for sure if he’d return, and this guy was around and he was cute and I did want to explore. But it didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I truly did, and ultimately I had to block the guy because my heart couldn’t open for anyone else when he was still there.

This morning, my stress made me snap at my daughter, continuing the pattern of hurting her by ignoring and annoyance yesterday. I took the longest shower, trying to clean away my pain, but it remained like a sickness that I couldn’t recover from. I was miserable, and worried sick about my kid too. 

Suddenly I get a call from my adoptive mom, panicked and urging me to buy out my entire moneys worth for food, because they were locking down in a quarantine in 48 hours for two weeks, and you couldn’t buy anything after. It fit the mood hearing that, and so I used it to go buy a lot of water, as I had none. Honestly I didn’t believe my Mother, and was annoyed at her dramatic and dark state of mind. It was typical, she made a huge deal out of things that caused panic, and I was not going to buy into it this time. Luckily, my ex agreed that older people were too morbid and ignorant about the situation, with their cries to buy out the entire groceries and stock up on food.

But anyway, my daughter wanted to go against my will, and did not let me walk with her. She even ran off when I told her to stay, which she usually listens to. I knew it was because of my hurting her and causing her to be alone and talk to herself for hours, with her toys. It stressed me.

So I let her pretend she didn’t need me, and walk ahead of me by a quarter of a block. 

We returned and she and I ate a lot, nervously. I stared at her, willing myself to calm down and love her. I finally lay down with her as she wanted sleep, and she kept chirping on about her book and naming the colors of her eyes and mine, and then I just got annoyed. I held her and told her I love her.  She moved away from me, but did call herself a kid, again. It was a start. Usually she calls herself “mother,” and tells me I’m her kid. 

I told her she’s going to her father today, and she let on that she was happy to go “out of this house.” I suddenly burst into tears, while telling her that I am sorry I hurt her today, and I am sad... she stared at me, seeing me cry and tried to comfort me by giving a kiss. I didn’t want her to think she had to fix me, but that I was strong and could take care of her. I was thinking “I am just having an off day and it’s okay for her to see me sad, I am human.” Then I realized, she feels loved by me! I am the one who doesn’t know for sure if she does. So I hugged her tight, and she seemed to relax. I realized, we are connected, she needs me. The realization made me cry because I never felt connected to anyone before. This was new to me, so of course I was sad and struggling to feel connected to my daughter. She did need me, though, and I am not useless and invisible like I often thought. I felt my responsibility for her, and how thin the ice was in how I can hurt her. I resolved to show my love to her and trust it more. 

Maybe I am not useless. Just because I don’t have a job, and am struggling to get an income. My in-laws called me lazy and not capable of being a functional person, but that was their own projection of how they saw women who did not work. And women /people who have emotional pain. 

Did they experience the joy of extreme emotions of love for your child? The ups and downs of learning to trust in another person? To feel.

I was so lost about my love because 1. I am extremely dependent on a relationship for fulfillment of myself, to feel good about who I am, and 2. His just falling off the radar sent me into panic because of deep seated abandonment fears, and my beliefs that people who I love end up leaving. Due to adoption. My biological mother left me, as a newborn. Even though it was not exactly her fault, she was too ill to keep me, it still sent me into abyss, feeling like I was all alone in this world. And now I was being triggered to experience the same exact feeling. I knew rationally that he wasn’t going to cause me to stop existing by him leaving, but my baby side of me that never recovered from the shock of her mother not coming back, felt that. We did bond and have such a strong connection, where we would look into each other’s eyes and see love, unconditional acceptance. And now he was gone, after the uncertainties about us being a good fit, and doubt on my part that he wanted me... I just didn’t know how I would go on, without him here. I had nothing left to hold onto, to feel less alone. And it was all hitting me.

“You’ll come back, on Sunday..” my voice cracked, in our search for my daughters shoes as she was eagerly waiting to get ready to go away to her father’s. I was reminding her that she’d get her shoes when she came back, because we couldn’t find those particular ones. She nodded, even though she had mentioned never coming back again a minute ago. It hurt so bad, to realize that maybe she didn’t trust me and therefore not know if she was coming back. I cried. Yes, she was coming home after. We were connected, we did have a bond. I picked her up and held her, kissing her as I brought her to the car. She sat in the seat, my ex father in-law buckling it. I felt so much raw pain, at how she must feel being stuck there. She actually watched me this time, as I stood there motionlessly. Her round eyes stared at me, and I choked back pain watching her go off.