Abandoned

Most acquaintances, friends and even family think I live larger than life. Here I am living on a boat, sailing around and having adventures right? Flown and jumped out of planes, dived oceans, all kinds of crazy things. And I have amazing stories from when I was in Parole, Law Enforcement, and the Army too. Yep, done a lot of wild, interesting things I have. Most folks who know me also think I have lived under a cloud my whole life too. Disaster, failure and trouble have followed me all along the way, not the least of which plagues me with constant pain and seizures. My life is filled with adventure and tragedy, great stories all, Hell - my life would be a damn good book. Folks follow along on my adventures, some even are envious of my life. Heck, some days I myself am amazed when I consider what I have been through, what I am still doing.

I have lived this life, done these things mostly to prove my own worth to myself, to find some sense of who I am. You see I have little notion of self-worth. I didn’t know this of course. Until recently, I thought I knew exactly who I am, thought I was just adventurous, altruistic, certainly cursed, perhaps a bit crazy too.

I have spent nearly 2 decades in daily meditation, and almost that much in regular therapy. Self-help books and group therapy too. And since the final failure of my 19 year relationship and marriage, my efforts at self-discovery have doubled, perhaps even tripled. The grief of loss was much more severe than warranted, and my ability to move on inhibited by things I just could not grasp. She certainly had no difficulty moving on, why was I so completely devastated? John. my shrink, told me for years that I had abandonment issues due to being adopted. Finally the idea that he might be right started to sink in. And then one day I read an article about adopted children and the psychological effects that they suffer as adults.

And it was me, every single bit. And then everything fell away, and I was an abandoned newborn once again. I cried for 2 days. I am still crying. My whole life is a shell, constructed to protect me from the horrors of being abandoned yet again. And worse, abandonment issues are just the tip of the Emotional Issue Pirate Iceberg - I suffer a whole laundry list of anxieties, griefs and sorrows. All completely unknown to me, all suffered continuously since birth. I found that inside, buried deep inside of me since birth there has been a scream. A blood curdling, full of all the horror and pain anyone can imagine, eternal gut wrenching howl of abject horror and misery at the very center of my soul. I have heard agonizing shrieks of those dyeing painfully and unexpectedly in the Army, this is exactly like one of those - only it doesn’t stop.

At birth I was wrenched from my mother, the only world I knew, before I was able to achieve self-awareness. My ego developed utterly alone and without the proper nurturing. And now I feel it fully. I am a child again, and now just as then there is no mother to hold me, to comfort me, to feed me, to guide me, to instill in me a sense of self worth, or even to love me. I am today, exactly as I have always been, utterly alone. Abandoned, cast out, unwanted, unloved.

I am without a past. No history, no family, no idea of any kind what people I come from. What is my history? Who are my people? What group do I belong to? How did my ancestors live? I have no anchor to this life at all. Every one of those things I had carefully crafted in life by building up lies to fill in the empty spaces. I have no people, no history, no base to build on.

I had no childhood. My adopted parents said I never cried as an infant. I had already stuffed my misery, even then. I spent my youth inventing my history. Taking others people, others ways, others family experiences and crafting my own. But it was not mine, just a shell. The adult I became was built on this shell, a construct like the rest. It is not me, though it was sure good enough to keep me fooled my entire life. I never grew up, never grew past the moment I was torn from the mother that had been my home for 9 months. Inside I find I am still the baby who is screaming for his mother, for his life.

"Warding off early pain leads to amnesia about one's childhood... The thread to the child one once was broken, leaving no trace of past experiences. Consequently, the wounded person is unable to experience her own feelings because her capacity to feel is no longer available to her... Emotional abandonment of the child creates uncertainty about her feelings... whether she ought to be having them, and even what they are. This continues into adulthood, leading to the sense of not having the "right" to feel. In other words, she has stopped feeling, and can no longer even perceive her own feelings," Kathryn Asper, 'The Abandoned Child Within'

My adopted parents had their own issues, long before I ever came to them. They had to adopt to have children, and so had deep self-esteem issues (and resentment on one of their parts). My adopted mother lived in fear of my wanting to know anything about my birth mother, and so to protect myself from being abandoned again I stuffed any thoughts, feelings or questions about my life before her into a deep, dark pit. It only started to crack after my adopted mother died (in fact, that is when I found I was born Theodore). So I missed out on working through ANY issues I had - and as an abandoned child I had plenty I assure you. Worse, this family did not believe in talking to anyone outside of the family about "Family" issues, so no therapy, no discussions with school councilors, nothing with nobody. Oedipal complex? Not allowed. I had to pretend I was OK and happy from day 1. No wonder I have spent most of my adult life in therapy of one kind or another.

The positive news; I am not alone, and now I know what is going on inside me. There are millions of Americans adopted like me. Many, many suffer the exact same crippling emotional distresses. There is a laundry list of issues, and apparently I fit them like a glove. The down side; I will never be right. I can be a lot better though, so I will settle for that certainly. But because I was denied specific nurturing at the most critical juncture, I have missed the boat on much of life's pleasures. And I think I will always be alone and lonely. I hope not, but I suspect it to be the case.

At least I can now get on with building a new life, one based on the realities of my situation instead of one crafted to keep my horrors hidden. Of course that means learning to live with the eternal heartbreaking sadness in my soul - the very thing I have been running away from for my entire life. Happily, I have some really powerful tools at my disposal. I meditate, I have a belief in a God who loves me, and there is one person on earth who actually does love me unconditionally - my daughter.

Her love is what has buoyed me, renewed me, given me hope and purpose for the past 18 years. She is, in fact, my redemption. Addie has filled me with joys I had never been able to imagine. She is my hope for a future, my hope for love, my hope for life. I, without a history of my own, have given life to a person whose history includes me - so I am now part of a chain of life and not just a broken link all alone. And I have opened my heart to her, have exposed the meat to danger as it were. So I am not actually completely alone any more. Somehow I still feel alone though, especially as she is now grown up and gone from me (oh how that hurt, how the pain of separation burned - but the pride of seeing her grow somehow salved the wound and I did not FEEL completely abandoned by her departure). Perhaps with a bit of work I can use this to define my own place in the universe, my own purpose.

That has always been my quest. Where is my place in the universe? Why was I born? Why was I abandoned? It is, apparently, a search common to adopted people everywhere. I still wish I didn’t have to be so alone. The pain of absolute solitude is as heavy as the howl of my silent scream. But at least I know I am not the only one who feels the heavy sadness of being truly alone. And now I know I don’t scream alone either. There are a lot of us. I guess I have a people after all. OK, they are all really screwed up, all incredibly lonely and alone, and all pretty dysfunctional...

Does this mean I am not going to wander the world? No, wander I will. Knowing my situation does not change it much. I am still alone, still lonely, still broken, still screaming inside, still abandoned, still searching. I am haunted by abandonment. It is my very soul. I have cried for so many others in my life. Fought for them, sacrificed for them, given everything to them. In the Army, we never left anyone behind. Lately, in true narcissistic fashion, my tears have been for me because I was left behind at birth - and my mother has never come back for me. I feel completely miserable inside. But I also have this small sliver of hope...

.