Introduction

I'm a gifted adult survivor of child abuse by my adopted parents, who left me with chronic depression, PTSD, and a touch of autism for good measure. Here I examine the fragments of my past. It's enlightening but not pleasant. You've been warned.

If you want to see my lighter sides, here's a list of my other blogs:

We Have Always Lived in a Homeschool my blog about homeschooling my three gifted children

Lioness' Fandom

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Friday, October 11, 2013

On Searching, Anger, and Closure

I get asked how I feel about aspects of my adoption, but thanks to my PTSD I'm not in touch with my feelings about anything that happened in my childhood.  Those feelings are locked down tight and I don't have the key.  People compliment me on my calmness is talking about these issues.  I'm not calm, I'm numb.  Here's a short FAQ though.

Do you want to search for your birthparents?

I don't know.  I'm working on a longer post about the ethics of this issue, but the short answer is that I'm not sure it's the right thing to do.  They gave me life, and I'm pretty sure they gave me up in good faith believing I would be sent to a loving home.  I can't see the agency telling them, "We giving your baby to abusive bullies", can you?  So if I did get in touch with them, I would be intentionally bringing them news that's going to hurt them, and they've never intentionally done anything to hurt me.  That seems like a rotten thing to do.

 Are you angry at your birthmother?

I don't really know because I'm not in touch with my feelings on this issue.  I'm angry at the intermediaries, but from what I know she seems as much of a victim of fraud as I was.  I suppose I'm probably a little angry at her for getting us into this situation in the first place, but I don't know what other options she had at the time.

Do you want closure?

No, on the contrary I want commencement.  Right now I've got the false closure that comes from stuffing these issues in a locked box and trying to walk away from them and "get on with my life".  That only works in the short term.  I greatly suspect that I'm going to have to crowbar the lock, wave away the dustcloud, haul everything out for a good cleaning, and then put it back in some sort of order before I can even begin to decide if I want closure or not.

(Have I mentioned I hate cleaning?)

I greatly suspect "closure" is an illusion.  Oh, and "comfortably numb" isn't comfortable at all.

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