I feel the need to enter my fb alter ego, Joel, [pronounced JO-el], to be able to share my thoughts tonight... that which I cannot say in my primary/fake world. You know the one; the one where you put your best face forward.
WHY? Two reasons, mainly, but there are always more. One, I am bold, but don't want to overexpose the people to the fiery hot topics I discuss as an adoptee (before its time), and two, because when one deeply exposes thought and truth of personal thought to the public, it can potentially be ugly, confessional, nasty, base. The world may snub, sneer, judge, pity, one's "report" of things (feelings and observations, really). Even what I think of as "non-adoptee" human thoughts and feelings. But when I break it down, even now, to say what I want without fear of repulsion and public self-humiliation, it all works 'round to the circumstances of my birth, the subsequent perspective of my self through and in this life... and I still always come back to.. adoption.
Here it is..
I try to escape life and all its details. It is too painful to lose people.
As an adult, as in now, and a friend loses a father, and I, as friend, am affected, and cry genuinely and feel the loss, but only slightly to what they must be feeling, I can only IMAGINE what I must have felt as a baby, being torn from the only thing that I knew, my Mother, my flesh and blood Mother unit. The only relation that I had. Was gone. Instantly. In the blink of an eye.
The 1st weekend I met her, as she drove away from the parking lot--me watching from the 9th floor. Cloudy day and staring through droplets on the window, I watched the path of the car. My eyes desperately followed, searching and looking, as Momma Bird disappeared. A deep gasp and shuddering child-like cry started to rise up in me, jerking and unable to catch my breath; but then a phrase, a phrase came out of me over and over soothing my little resurrected baby soul. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. It was the baby self-talk I sensed had happened pre-verbally, but here it was replaying out loud in my life at age 27. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. The moment took me back to a place of no conscious memory, but I knew I'd had this conversation with myself before.
I found. She left. There's more. There's always more.
Which brings me back to my confession.
Here we are a people with a history of LOSS. Loss from birth. Loss of relation. Loss of comfort. Loss of communication. Loss of natural connection. Loss of personal identity. Loss of family. Loss of foundation. Loss of knowledge. Loss of heritage. Loss of history.
Quite a foundation of Loss.
And maybe, we are one of the *lucky* ones that finds, even, the Source of All Goodness in Life, and find many things to help us--tools that we did not have before. I could not imagine living or handling ANY of this adoption revelation and evolution without Someone to lean on. My God led me through My Life's Mysterious Path - The Journey of Adoption and Finding my Birthfamily AND BEYOND.
Yet, STILL, the consequences of adoption/separation from mother are deep and wide.
The act of abandonment, no matter the cause or reason, molds the logical thought processes of the infant and certainly, must have been a heartbreak of sorts. Supreme grief.
As a baby, I slept for long periods of time, longer than usual. So much so, my parents took me to the doctor thinking I had a (their words) "sleeping disease". All I did was sleep, wake up, eat, and go back to sleep. My mother says she wanted to play with me, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and eat. Eat and sleep.
So here I am grieving and must have been trying to get back to the womb. The place of darkness, the place of safety and knowledge that I was connected to something. A place of warmth. The place to sleep and rest.
I was a baby depressed. And I slept.
So through my life, often times, I sleep to escape. Bad news. Deaths. No work. No money. Bill collectors. Family. Lack of family interaction. Unorganized life and house around me. Clutter. Friends. Making friends. Dinner. Kids. I cannot do it all successfully. I feel like that very thing I needed to learn to be successful in life, I missed. I do not own.
So I hide from life.
Life is filled with ugly clutter and the only way to turn it off is to sleep, to dream, to trance, to transcend out of my reality. ***Mind you, this is only a partial list of all that is skewed because of my placement in life.
And tonight, with the loss of a friend's Father, I am petrified that I am going to die too soon, or someone I love will. That I won't have time to tell and say to everyone that I love that I love them and really show them that I love them.. so I stare at the TV, staying awake as long as possible, so tomorrow, during the day, I may sleep.
Originally posted August 24, 2011 @ 12:20 A.M.
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