It's like I never existed.

I had a great conversation with my friend Joy today. She is a wise, generous soul. She listens and having walked in my shoes, she provides wonderful support.

She was reminding me that when humans are in the middle of pain, there seems like little else we can trust. It's familiar. We've been rejected before. Some adoptees have a visceral reaction to being rejected because of what happened to us as babies. I know what this pain is, but it is overcoming me right now. I can rationalize it away with consummate rhetorical skill, but it doesn't change the way it possesses the innermost part of me. I was thinking about what David told me to do: to write it until I mean it, but right now it seems like one of the punishments meted out by Dolores Umbridge, in which writing on the paper cuts the message into the skin.

I know many people who love me and need me. I love and need people, too. Problem is, the people I love the most fiercely usually don't love me back. And what's even shittier is that these people don't reject me in kind ways, using words. They turn their backs and walk away as though I never existed to them. We never sat together and talked, never touched, never connected. WTF?

Whether these people in my life don't have the courage to speak to me, or they don't value me, I can't say. There are many more possibilities, I am sure. But their leaving without a trace, and showing me such immense lack of respect, triggers me in a monumental way. Joy pointed out that when I said, "It's like I never existed," I could have been talking about the me that was left behind in the hospital--along with all the rest of C's sparse love and emotional baggage--41 years ago. It's like I am trying to speak to people but have no voice; my words are lost in the wind; I cry and no one hears. I am alone and defenseless, no matter what anyone says to me. I know it's my job to take care of myself, to pick up that baby and love her unconditionally, but I don't have the strength to do it right now.

Being in that place leaves me on the edge of madness, both of anger and insanity.

Triggers

I am going through a very difficult time. My pain links back to my being adopted more than it would seem at first glance. In all honesty, I have been plagued by suicidal ideation for about a year, and I unsuccessfully tried to take my life two and a half weeks ago. I am able to be darkly humorous about it now and acknowledge that my first mother's iron-clad liver saved me, despite everything. I am in intensive therapy and on more medication than I wish I were. A good friend doing genealogy for me discovered that a second cousin of mine committed suicide in 1970, a year after I was born. From what I know of my first family, it seems very likely that there is a pretty involved family history of depression.

There are emotional and behavioral triggers that push me over the edge, and have done so in the past. As I mentioned in my last post, being invalidated or ignored is a huge trigger. I become extremely anxious and pretty much lose my hard-won ability to stand up for myself. Case in point: last week I wanted to make an appointment to see my primary care physician about a headache I've had for three weeks. The call center scheduled me with a nurse practitioner who works with my MD. I called back, asking for an appointment with my physician because I feared giving all the backstory for my complicated illnesses in 15 minutes or less. I was told it was the NP or nothing. While I have the utmost respect for NPs, I was also concerned that she wouldn't have the time to review my case and see what factors might have contributed to my headache. I know that providers are busy, and she would probably only read the last note my MD had written, not the entire, knotted, complicated stack of information that has been gathered when mistake after mistake was made with my care. I worried that the NP wouldn't listen to me, and would fob me off with meds for a migraine. I got to my doctor's office, checked in, and was taken to the NP's exam room. I then proceeded to have a panic attack, with my blood pressure through the roof. The intake RN was rightly freaked out and told me to take deep breaths. My BP was so high she was concerned I was going to stroke out. I knew, though, it was transient panic. Thankfully, my MD switched patients with the NP and was able to see me. I felt enormous relief to be with a physician who knows me well, believes me, and who doesn't have to study up on my messy case. She and I came up with a plan for the future to avoid a repeat of what happened. In retrospect, I realized that I was petrified that I wouldn't be heard or believed. That is a HUGE trigger for me. She is concerned that I have a slow bleed in my brain from the Lovenox I am taking to avoid more clots. What a nightmare my blood is proving to be.

Then today, I had an interesting, raw session in therapy. My therapist is Dr. David Brodzinsky, who has done research, written, and specialized in adoption for his entire career. He was a powerful eminence at Rutgers, but thankfully retired to a town very close to where I live. While I don't like that he uses Positive Adoption Language, he really does get what adoptees go through and is patient and kind. I respect him, and I feel that respect is reciprocated. He has allowed me to be angry with him when I felt dismissed, and to redirect conversations when I felt he was off-track. In my short, unhappy life, I have seen a stable of really insecure therapists who, when I criticized them, oddly took it personally, rather than as part of a business relationship, and attacked back. David doesn't do that. It is a heartening revelation to know that there are therapists out there who do act like professionals.

Anyway, today I described how I am at a very low point and was talking about how I feel that I am, in my core, a good person. I care about others and give as much to relationships as I am able. And yet I am used as a whipping girl by many people for reasons that escape me. I wish that I could be strong like my friends Linda and Joy, and avoid letting other people's garbage poison me. I wish I could call people out on their nastiness; I am slowly improving at this, but it is a very slow work in progress. David suggested today that I am unable to value myself because I care so deeply about being rejected by C. He pointed out that my beloved cousin told me that it's really C, not me, and that she isn't warm and loving with ANYONE. But it still sucks to know that she hated me when I was in utero, that she starved herself and didn't care about taking care of me even prenatally, and that she could so easily shut the door and never look back. That she treated me as an unwelcome intruder without right to know who I was born to be, and that she doesn't care enough to help me find out medical history that could improve my quality of life. That she poisoned my brother against me. I just don't matter to her. I am a threat she cannot handle. And if another first mom makes excuses for C, I will be triggered again, and probably not very nice. There is no excuse for cruelty. None.

My parents love me. My family loves me. My friends love me. There are many people out there to whom I've made a difference. And yet I feel that people only value me for what I can do for them, not because I am a person worth loving. People give me what they're able, but I am generally abandoned or left behind. I don't matter enough. I don't want to stay alive to avoid hurting others. I don't want to stay alive because I feel I deserve it. I know that I do. I seem, however, to be doomed to suffer in this life. I can love myself until the cows come home, but it's not enough. I always end up getting the shaft. I live on an island that C put me on. I try to get off the island, but the boat sinks, or the help offered never comes. I guess I can accept that this island is my home for whatever life I have left, but it isn't all that positive to live feeling so alone.

My triggers are so close to the surface that I have pulled away from people because I can't risk hurting any more than I do right now. My resources are spare; I have nothing left to give to others or to myself.

Where I stand right now, I feel like cursing C. She avoided acknowledging her pregnancy with me because she couldn't deal with it. She told me that she wished she'd aborted me, but it appears she didn't have the courage. In a sick way, I want to write a suicide note that says, "Dear C, Do I have to do everything myself?"

David told me to write about my sadness and anger and to engage with the cognitive aspect of my knowledge that I am a person with value, despite my first mother wanting me dead. He claims the emotional acceptance will come later. I do see that I have value, despite all the horrendous people I have had the misfortune to cross paths with. I am smart and loving. But I have never been happy, despite my excellent acting skills. 41 years is a long time never to have been happy, settling for crumbs, being kicked around. I see things that I can change, but unfortunately the most comforting bits involve homicide. Just kidding. Sort of.

I can't imagine living another 40 years that are like the first 41. I just can't. I can't live in this cage, rejected over and over and over. Shakyamuni Buddha was right: Life is suffering.