Yesterday I was feeling awful. LIke I just had to get out of my skin. I was horrible to my husband, no actually I wasn't horrible to "HIM" I was hurting and acting out my hurt by throwing the ironing around as I tried to tidy up. My husband took it that it was about "him" as lots of people do, even me, I mean it must be about "me"? its so hard when your going through ACTIVE healing and getting stuck in an emotion that belongs somewhere else in time.

I mean what do you do, turn round and say "hey I'm acting out now but its nothing to do wiht today its about another time" yeah I can see people who are not working on past issues tolerating that one!. I guess I just want to vent about that. coz I;m angry that I've got to do this stuff and angry that its like only me and T that understand unyet on a daily basis our minds continue to work on this unconsouis stuff and its like a shameful secret that I have to keep to myself when T isnt here.

ANyways yesterday was bad, I felt bad, and I re read some of T's old emails to me to try and feel connected to her. I went upstairs to my bedroom where I keep the book I borrowed from her to try and keep her alive in my mind while shes away. It works a bit, not as much as i hoped for but it works in a sutle kind of way, somewhere in my stomach when I look at it, I remember the session where we talked about me having it and that helps keep her real.

SO then the pain still wouldn't go so I journalled and what I wrote surprised me, I started writing that the break reminds me of the silences when growing up, the silences my step mum would create when I had done something bad, except I couldnt figure what I could have done that was that bad??? I was a kid, sometimes during the summer holidays I;'d go swimming with the other kids all day and that was crime, the fact that I was doing something that a kid does was a crime in my step mothers eyes, my punishment was to have to stand and do all the familys ironing and her face would look so angry and she would continue talking to my brother but would sentence me to her silence.

My stomach was hurting remembering this, remembering she really "didn't want me" she had adopted my birht brother and got me later on, she always said that she took me because I made the pigeon pair and she would kinda of laught.

you know when I wrote this yesterday this onen line "she didnt want me" its like I always really knew that!! but I dissociated that knowledge away, I dissociated that gut wrenching pain and shame and humiliation away.

I created a fantasy mother, one that totally adored me, I couldnt have lived with the consious knowledge that she didnt want me.

It seems most times she would punish me with her silences and somehow those silences conveyed so much to me, but I had to run from it.

I see now that its not even the fact that I was adopted, not even about my birht mother giving all her children up, because it really wasn't that personal with her, she didnt know me, she gave me up because she didnt want to keep her children, its not like she kept me for a while and disocvered it was me she didnt want, but with my adoptive mother, she kept me, she knew me and its me she didnt like, now that does hurt, but funny, as It hurt yesterday it also didnt matter because its alreadly happened and
today I dont need to believe that she cherishes me, I did back then, any child needs to feel cherished by their parents.

I told little me as I wrote yesterday that its ok NOW! T being away was feeling like in the background that she was punishing me with her absence, with her silence, that she doesnt want me. I was able to put that right, to explain the "realitiy" of the situation, that T isnt my adoptive mother.

As a child trying to work your way back into your mothers good books was important, I just had to get to a place where she was happy wiht me. it seems that was my life, trying to get into a place where she would talk to me and want me.

I think my internet use is connected to this, If I get a reply or whatever then I am ok! In the background the internet, everything had become part of this old life. An unconsious repeating of the old senario. Accept I know now, I can turn the switch off.

Ii still feel a lot of negative feelings are in me today, I feel I need to verbalise this with T and experience the old transferrence in Real time and cry it out, but for now until the holidays are over I will have to work with it by journalling and keeping it consious and reminding myself I know where all this ocmes from.

I can honestly say that nothing that happened to me as a child was as bad emotionally as not being wanted by the person you love! I know that adoptive mum had an horrendous life hence why she her application for adoption through the right channels was rejected) too and that she could only do what she could do but its me it effected so its only my end I can work on.

I have to sit with the feelings that I split of when I was to young to deal with. I mean where does a child go when the only person that they depend on is the person that they can't depend on???????

sorry for the ramble, lots of stuff to get rid off!

hey mouse. i have two adopted brothers. well... this is a bit complicated... but my mother got married to her first husband and gave birth to two girls. then she had a couple miscarridges and they told her that she might well not be able to have anymore kids. so... she adopted 2 boys.

(this is a little unclear... but i've heard something about how some women can't carry boys. i don't know whether that was the case with my mother or not????? i'm fairly sure she doesn't know anything about this condition at any rate...)

in those days there was a shortage of people who were willing to adopt. i guess back then people had funny notions about genetics. there was something about 'if i adopt a vietnamese infant will i need to learn vietnamese in order to speak to my child when it gets older???'. people really didn't have much of an idea... and they thought that genetics played a much more significant role (sin acquired via the blood and all) and so not many parents wanted to adopt. it was hard to find adoptive parents.

(i mean to contrast the situation then with the situation now when so very many people want to adopt and where there are fairly stringent safeguards on screening people who want to adopt).

my mother...

got divorced. she then married her second husband when the youngest adopted boy was 7 years old. the other boy lived with her first husband and the girls were old enough to have left home (scooted out the door as fast as they could). then... 9 months after her marriage to her second husband, along came me. so i was raised with the youngest adopted boy (who i think of as my brother) though he was a bit older than me (and he scooted from home when i was 7 same time as my dad).

my mother had funny ideas about a lot of things. one of them was certain notions around 'truth' and 'lying'. for example, she always told me that santa claus was a lie that adults tell children and that there is no such thing although the myth had origins in st. nick. for example, she always told my brother that he was adopted. apparantly when he was an infant people used to say 'awwwww he looks like you'. and my mother would go 'funny that - he is adopted' in this kind of gloating way (i think she liked the shock value 'cause as a said it was uncommon for people to adopt back then and she would always succeed in embarrassing the person who had commented. so he always knew that he was adopted. from before he knew what adoption meant.

did she treat him different? she made 'you aren't mine' out to be an excuse for giving him a hard time and abusing him, yeah she did. but then... she gave me a hard time and abused me too it was just that her reasons were different. she would come up with reasons to justify her acting out her moods basically. you simply could not win with her.

i'm not sure what the point of that was.

i'm sorry.

[Perna]

Yes, I remember my stepmother cornering me and hitting me and thinking, "If your mother doesn't like you. . .?" There seems so little recourse but I kept remembering the thread running through your post, mouse, from the beginning of how you're throwing the laundry around and your husband thought it was about him. . . I think we were doing the same when we were children, thinking it was about "us" because we didn't have enough life experience yet to have any other thoughts?

So very complicated with so many layers. . . It seems to me though like you're working so well, sloughing through it all as is "necessary" to heal. There will be a nice hot bath at the end to get the mud off, with bath salts! :-) Think of that.