The Furies

I have had a terrible time letting go of the anger that has built up this past week. The non-dialogue related to the primal wound and my personal experience has finally led me to fury. Today there was yet another exchange in which someone told me that I cannot possibly feel what I feel because he or she doesn't feel the same way, and a psychologist backed that person up, telling me I was rude for saying that this person's opinion cannot measure my experience.

Nasty Person: Ms Margalina[sic]: you were seperated [sic] from your biological mother, and you have these problems. That doesn't mean the seperation [sic] caused those problems. I only mentioned myself because I have quite a few of the issues some Primal Wound believing adoptees say they do, and I was not adopted.

Me: Thanks for sharing your opinion, but it is no more than that. Your opinion.


Nasty Ph.D.: Ms. M., I'm not sure why I posted your reply to [Nasty Person], except that I have been posting what you've had to say.
[Nasty Person] did give her reasons for her comment, and it appears to me that it is actually an opinion, derived logically from observation of other people's lives as well as her own-- if "no more", it's also "no less". Real opinions are a different matter from the unexamined prejudices that commonly pass for opinion. 

Me: So [Nasty Person] knows more about me than I do myself? Point taken.

Which led me to think about my old friends, the Furies.

While the power of the Furies is considerable, it is consuming and difficult. The three, Tisiphone ("blood avenger"), Alecto ("unceasing anger"), and Magaera ("the jealous one") can do good work, for sure. I am especially fond of Tisiphone, who avenges crime against family. As an adoptee, I have had my share of crime against family.

The rational side of me, on the other hand, recognizes that the anger I feel is what my enemies want me to feel. If I am furious, they have won. They have no interest in learning about what I feel, or why. Their self-proclaimed job is to reeducate me and point out what they see as my "foolishness."

I have asked myself why this studied deafness to the story of my pain is so anger inducing. Why are they invested in telling me, over and over, that I am wrong about what I feel? Why can't I recognize they are abusive and just walk away?

The answer? It taps straight into the life I have led, for nearly forty-two years, as a second-class citizen  an adoptee. Of being told that everything that happened was all for my own good. That any pain I felt was invented, unless it follows the trajectory that "child development" has staked out for me. That my story is not as important or worthy as those of people who follow the "rules."

When people don't hear me, when they don't at least make an attempt to listen, I become furious. I used to blame myself, but now I blame them. It is time to let go and not to engage, even when I want to help fellow adoptees. There will always be people who cannot accept that people have their own experiences that are not quantifiable. As my father always likes to say, the social sciences are soft. They like to think they're peers of the hard sciences, but humans aren't chemical compounds. You can never control for all the variables where humans are involved, unless you keep them in cages. And even then, you have the rogue variables of genes, even if you remove environment and human contact. Good fucking luck with that, Dr. Moreau. Yes, I mean you.

I told someone recently that I felt vivisection of adoptees was the only means to prove to empiricists that some adoptees feel what we do. Dr. Moreau expressed disbelief: "Why did Ms. Marginalia say that?" This was, in my opinion, disingenuous. It's all about the data, and the data can only be gathered by what is seen. Dissection of a living organism provides data. Personal accounts don't hold water because they are exactly that: personal and tainted. And this person is a psychologist.

But I digress. I was talking to my friend Joy today about this, and I decided that these non-adopted people are befuddled by the depth of our feelings of loss because it's a complete non-issue for them. Anyone who has grown up with their natural family immediately starts out with a sense of groundedness that adoptees don't have. Abusive natural family or not. You look like people around you and can see yourself in others. It's so subtle that it's unremarked. And because it's subtle, it cannot even be seen to exist. Except for those of us who don't have it, have missed it, and want it. If you don't care or don't want it, fine. Hooray, you! But that's not the case for many of us. And to be told, over and over and over, despite telling our stories, that we are wrong and misguided and slaves to "fuzzy" or nonexistent science? Well, fuck you. Again.

So next time I get furious, remind me that these so-called people don't have my best interests at heart. Not at all. They don't want to help, they want to belittle and badger. They aren't worthy of my time or attention, no matter how many degrees they have (or don't).

I remember back to sessions with Dr. Brodzinsky, whose opinions matter to me a hell of a lot more because he has worked with adoptees for his ENTIRE career. Although he doesn't embrace the primal wound, he doesn't tell adoptees that they make shit up, either. When I told him about these dismissive harpies bitches people back in October, he told me to turn as deaf an ear to their entreaties to "understand" as they do to my accounts of what I feel.

I'll save my next call to the Furies for something more worthy.

Peace out.