Hello all,
That’s right, I’m baaaaaaaaack.
So, as I’m sure you can see, this blog has slowly devolved to become a glorified, shiny, printed, open journal-of-sorts. Quite frankly, I no longer give a fuck (lies). Any way…
I lost another job (wah-wahhh), but, although it was still a major bummer, I did care less this time (progress?). I think, no, I know I dealt with it a lot better because instead of bawling my eyes out and thinking “what am I going to tell the boyfriend?!”, as well as saying fuck a few times and then apologizing profusely to some coworkers (maybe that’s a bit of a clue), I just basically listened patiently to their bullshit story until I couldn’t stomach any more of it, told them that I disagreed with their reasoning, and in very highfalutin political jargon essentially said “this is bullshit”, then asked to leave…
I did break a little and cried when I said goodbye to one of the sweetest coworkers I’ve ever had, but that was it. I went home and cried some more, but moreso out of exhaustion than anything. Really, is there anything worse after a long job search than having to search again after only a month and a half of employment? Not really. In the end, though, I ended up feeling mostly like that snazzy guy in the picture above.
Soon before I lost the job, I started seeing a psychologist. Originally, that was for reasons completely unrelated to work, (it was mostly due to my own seeming inability to feel secure in a relationship) – but it has slowly evolved to be about a whole lot more. I think it’s a good thing.
Most of you probably don’t know that I was adopted. In fact, most of you probably think, OK, so what? Well, that’s what I used to think, as well. However, having come to my “wits end”, in regard to all things identity and attachment in my adult life, I have started to consider the implications of adoption and how it may affect the adoptee in adulthood. Upon further investigation, it has become clear that I am struggling to “get my shit together” like many adult adoptees do, due to issues with identity, self-worth and attachment.
Yup, that’s right. Shit’s gettin’ real. You see, I’m far too smart to be struggling like this. That’s RIGHT, I am owning something, and at this point it is my intelligence. Losing jobs, lacking direction, pushing people away… This will not lead me to the life I desire, nor to the success that I KNOW I could achieve and enjoy.
I know I spoke earlier of starting another blog for the health and wellness stuff. I thought about starting a whole new blog to talk about my findings in regard to adoption, and if I do decide to meet my birth relatives, about reunion. However, this blog is the one I am most proud of. I know, with a title like Ballbag and Taint, mothers everywhere are cringing at the thought of their own daughter proudly at the helm of such a thing, but this sort of humour, language and rawness is the closest, most purest “Me” to have yet graced this planet (aside from that time where I mooned the fine establishment that was my high school).
To elaborate a bit – adoptees grow up lacking something extremely primitive that everyone who grows up in their natural family take for granted – genetic cues. Now, I don’t have all of the info on this yet in order to use some awesome science-y jargon to explain it, but, essentially, this is like asking a calculator to find an answer for you without you giving it all of the information it needs. This is by no means the fault of the adoptive parents, but this lack of information happens regardless of their love and support, and literally cannot be avoided due to the fact that the biological relatives are not around AT ALL.
Also, there is a subtle lack of validation to your existence when little things like facial similarities, hair colour, eye colour, gait, body language, scent, talents and preferences are not there to be mirrored back to the developing child as they grow. This is not information that is very consciously absorbed by us as we grow, but it does help, in a subtle way, to validate one’s existence. This is why many adoptees, especially as adults, often have trouble with identity and self-worth. In fact, many of us, including myself, often have trouble acknowledging that we have any value. In some ways, it is a foreign idea as we did not have that primitive validation as a child.
On the much more uncomfortable topic of attachment, well, aside from the obvious – the trauma of the initial separation of baby from mother at birth, the adoptee grows up facing many “relinquishments” or rejections. Especially if the adoptive family is very different from the adoptee, there can be so much misunderstanding, confusion, and hurt in the raising of the child that rejection just becomes a part of their being. You can see how this could affect the adult adoptee when it comes to relationships and career (*cough, cough* – being fired many times).
Nancy Verrier, a psychologist, author, mother, and adoptive mother, has written two books on the subject. The first being “The Primal Wound”, and the second being “Coming Home to Self”. She talks about how the initial trauma of the separation creates pathways in the brain that are based on the trauma of being relinquished at birth. She goes on to point out that adoptees often display traits very similar to those who suffer from PTSD. The major difference being that we (adoptees) tend to think that the PTSD version of ourselves IS, in fact, who we are, because there is no pre-trauma personality. I found this very interesting, mostly because it makes so much sense. As a result, so many adoptees are diagnosed with ADD as a child, due to their always being in a state of “hyper vigilance”.
Let me take a moment here to clarify a little what hypervigilance often feels and looks like, because the use of the word “hyper” here can be very misleading. In my own experience, it’s not an abundance of energy, or an extreme cognizant sense of “something bad is going to/could happen at any moment”, so much as a paralyzing fear so deep that it simply impairs ones ability to make decisions, to lose oneself in a project, task or hobby, or to do something that would distract one from being able to constantly, albeit passively, observe their surroundings.
As you can well imagine, this hypervigilance (which is essentially just this stupid cloud that fogs up the brain), can really get in the way of forming a personality. If you are unable to stay focused for very long on anything, it’s hard for it to really sink in. This applies to learning, as well. In fact, it has been my experience that this hypervigilance makes learning that much harder when the intent is to learn. It seems that learning is much easier for someone who is constantly in a state of hypervigilance when it happens by accident. I can only assume this is because the adoptee then doesn’t realize they are no longer passively observing their surroundings. Instead, they have switched to a state of passively learning.
That’s a complicated topic, for sure. I am only just beginning to put some of the pieces together, here, so bear with me.
I will not delve too much further in to it today. I only just started reading Coming Home to Self last night. There are a lot of parallels between adoptees and those with PTSD, and those who dealt with trauma during childhood, like sexual abuse, which I will try to correlate and explain in a later post (mostly to do with self-blame). For now, here is a long, but really great lecture on adoption that you can watch on YouTube.
That’s all for now, bitches!
Ballbag & Taint 