Tight Shoulders or the Insane Thinking of an Adoptee

I relaxed my shoulder once by mistake. I’d had a massage, and I was driving home when I had the sensation that my right arm was about to fall out of the socket. I realized my shoulder had relaxed, and that, despite my not actively holding on, my arm remained part of my body. Oh, the shock! I had thought it was my job to keep my limbs attached to my trunk at all times. I had no idea they could stay on of their own accord. By the time I’d processed these thoughts, my shoulder had woken up and gone into its familiar grip and hold position. 

People keep telling me to relax. I think this is hysterical. They would make better use of their time standing in the middle of a field, yelling up at the clouds to come on down from the sky.

If I could relax, Darlings, I would be splayed out on a hammock somewhere in Costa Rica instead of chewing on the inside of my cheek as I try to get enough words on the page so I can feel I have earned my right to be on the planet for another couple of hours.  

Life is one big tit for tat in my world, and there’s no time for relaxing when you are busy trying to figure out what others owe you and, more cumbersome, what you owe others.

If you feed me, it’s my job to listen to you. If you give me a ride, it’s my job to pay for the gas. If you get me a job, it’s my job to find you a rent-controlled apartment. If you take me into your house, it’s my job to make your life better. 

If you adopt me, it’s my job to mirror you or, better yet, become you. 

 When my parents signed my adoption papers, an agreement was struck: we’ll take care of you and you’ll take care of us. It didn’t matter that I didn’t sign the papers: their signature covered it all. 

It’s physically impossible to relax when you owe the world your body. 

What’s crazy is that this was not a deal my parents struck with me. It was not a deal the adoption agency struck with my parents. 

It was a deal between me and my brain. Sometime between conception and maybe about six years of age, I decided I owed my life to others. 

I decided I was not free.  

I decided I needed to be a good girl so my parents would keep me. 

Being relinquished made me crazy! 

I have thoughts about myself and the world that are not true! For a long time, I thought my birth mother hated me, then I met a bunch of first mothers, and I realized the damage to their brains was possibly even more severe than the damage to mine. They did not hate their children. They hated themselves, the people who made them give up their children, the thoughts they could not seem to control. 

For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me because I could not focus. I needed to do better, be better. I had not read Scattered Minds. I did not know that trauma takes the brain’s ability to focus and sends it to the moon in a million pieces.

For a long time I thought I was my fault.

And so I tightened. 

Thank the lord for Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Thank the lord for second chances.

For ten million chances to let my arms hang loose.

To swing like they don’t have a care in the world.