The Relinquished Baby's Billboard Brain

It has occurred to me my recently that my brain is a billboard that reads I AM ABOUT TO DIE. 

 This is the story of my billboard. I’m going to tell you as if it’s true, and we’ll see how it flies for you.

When I was flowering into child from sperm and egg, my brain grew and stretched as my fingers and heart did until the day came when I was too big for in and had to get out. 

My spine was a loose thing and could not balance the weight of my head and brain yet, and so I was being born into arms that would hold me until the day I could hold myself. However, not all mothers can or choose to keep their babies, and I was one of those babies that was going somewhere else.  

The brain doesn’t understand somewhere else. If you put a fish from its bowl of water directly into a bowl of different water, more often than not it will die because the change was too overwhelming and too sudden. As a child, I was not a fish, so I did not die, but my brain read the situation as I AM ABOUT TO DIE, and since I did not have language or other skills to fully feel and process my feelings, the belief was imprinted on my being. I bonded with it. I became that belief. 

I believe babies imprint differently with this belief when they are separated from their mother. Some brains handle it better than others. From what I’ve seen, “some” means almost none. From what I’ve seen, most brains that lost their mothers too early look like I AM ABOUT TO DIE.

(What if the medical community developed a mind reading advice so they could actually see and respond to this message! It’s real! Our trauma is real! It has been seen! Holy cow! I feel so GOOD! So validated!)

If your brain is constantly telling you that you are about to die, guess what? You create situations, consciously or not, to prove this true. You drive dangerously. You get in cars with others who drive dangerously. You go skydiving. You take drugs. You walk too close to the edge. You starve yourself. You don’t brush your teeth. You cut yourself. You get in fights. 

When I was a young girl, my parents let a grown man we had just met take me in his car and go in an adventure. And that’s all that happened. Nothing bad occurred. When I was a baby, my mother left me in the carriage outside as she went into the library in Manhattan to return books. And no one stole me. When I was older, I used to drive alone from one coast to the other, and my parents would ask me to call when I got to the other side. My friends used to wonder why I didn’t have to call every night. My friends said their parents would have made them call. 

I’m not (directly) accusing my parents of neglect. I’m suggesting that perhaps they subconsciously were responding in a mirror-neuron sort of way with the message on my brain. 

Recently I have been playing with my brain, and I’ve been working at changing the billboard to I AM SAFE. If I find myself doing something (overspending, overworrying, putting myself in dangerous situations), I ask myself if I’m doing this just to agree with the belief that I’M ABOUT TO DIE. So far, the answer has always been yes. So now I am looking for proof that I AM SAFE. And there is so much! 

First of all, I’m alive!!  

When I start looking for proof that I’m safe, I get overwhelmed: just sitting here, I have a roof over my head, a blanket around my shoulders. I have food in the frig. I have heat. I have water to drink. I have friends whom I love and who love me. I have people to call if I need anything. I have work that makes me money. I have seatbelts in my car. I have a bed with blankets. I have socks for my feet and shoes to pull on over the socks so the sharp stones outside don’t hurt my feet. 

I am living through a pandemic, and I am well. If I get sick, there are doctors who are there to help.  

My brain would rather list all the ways I’m in danger. My brain gets both excited and bored while I list the ways in which it’s safe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it says. Whatever. I’m safe. So what. Let’s get back to the attacker hiding in the bushes. That’s so much more exciting!! 

My brain is a terrified child and it needs someone in control to keep it from running the show. My mind and my body can help that lump of connected neurons to learn new tricks.

My mind and my body and my support system of the other adoptees I know can address the billboard.

 They can change the message if they are willing to work their flipping butts off. 

 I am my own full-time job. The benefits are excellent.