Abandonment

I had a hard time deciding whether to write a poem or use prose to discuss this topic. It seems a little strange for a subject but if you are adopted then it is really at the crux of your inner being.
I define my inner being as my self respect, self esteem, self worth, self confidence, ego, and there are probably a few others but I can’t think of them at this time.
I just finished watching Australia (an above average movie) and most connected with the young lad in the movie and basically how he was treated in that country. The Australians felt basically the same as white southern plantation owners regarding the parent child bond…that it really didn’t exist. What a sad miscalculation in judgment that was for all concerned.
I always tear up when a movie is about someone being left and whether they get back together or if they never do. I remember the first time I felt this way was in the seventh grade while reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline.
The main characters were separated and spent their whole life looking for each other and at one point in the story they were SO CLOSE and yet they missed each other. I remember the internal rooting for them to look around the corner and put this travesty in their lives to rest forever but it wasn’t meant to be. So I get a little misty when this happens.
A psychologist told me once that every time I tear up and get a little misty it is the reaction to an unresolved emotional problem in my childhood and I know they are right.
In watching Paula mother her small children especially when they were infants; I saw firsthand how important maternal bonding is to the development of the child. To miss out on that causes a big hole that is never really filled.
I have a big hole that will never really be filled.
Wow, how can I say that especially when I have been blessed with a great family, children, grandchildren and other relatives? It’s easy, it is really about me personally and it has nothing to do with the other relationships in my life. It is a situation so personal that it is akin to baking a cake and forgetting to put an important ingredient in the batter and you bake it. It comes out and no matter how much frosting you put on it; you cannot fix the batter.
That is how adopted children feel, they have something missing and it can never be added back into their life; they will just need to adjust their life accordingly.
Now some adoptees are adopted at birth but if they know they are adopted then they will probably wonder. Adoption makes a child feel different.
I went through my early school years and probably high school feeling different from all the other kids that had a natural mother and father. Maybe to a certain extent I was using it in a manner to make myself feel special but I do know as I got older that I tried harder to conceal it as if I was genetically deformed because any interested woman in my life would be turned off because I had no family medical history. Hey, it was a silly idea but that is what I thought.
As I got older and became aware more of the people around me I discovered that adoption was sometimes a whole lot better than divorced and remarried families or single mom homes with rotating uncles living with the family. So I started to open up about my life and tried to have some order to it.
Having a child in high school didn’t help either since she was given up for adoption so I had, in fact, perpetrated the same disastrous life style on her that I had gone through. I had always hoped that her story would be different but sadly years later when a relationship was formed I was able to hear that she also had an unsettling home life.
So how does this hole in my life present itself in my day-to-day living? I think in a couple of ways, one being that I still have a fear, although a minor one, of being forgotten or left behind. Now, I have no incidents in my current life that I can remember at this time but I am sure there have been ones that have caused me stress. The larger problem is that I am unable to nurture a child when they are injured and I know that this is wrong but there is no internal programming in me to do what is necessary to comfort. I am working on it and I am better but I am still pathetic when compared to Paula or others that I have seen. I will continue to try and do better but there are no guarantees here.
I had an opportunity to be in a group therapy class several years ago and as part of the course I spoke to the psychologist about this nurturing problem that I have and she told me that when a mother holds her baby and talks to them, coos and the other sounds that they make, that, along with the eye contact opens up a information superhighway between the mother and child. That highway transfers to the child the sense of belonging, love and acceptance…that is the nurturing development that a baby learns during that period of their life. The statement that struck me was that if you do not get this during infancy then you can never get it. It will be part of the missing programming in my personality. I thought, “Well that sucks”.
Parents need to make sure that they really concentrate on this aspect in their child’s development because it is a building block that every child needs.
Me, I will continue to tear up at moments of abandonment but at least I know why this emotion surfaces and although I wish it was different I am ok with it as much as I can be.