Adoption, Dreams, Food, and Money
How much of getting needs met for an adopted person involves a feeling of negotiation, even subconsciously? If I’m good, you’ll feed me, house me, love me. If I go to the college you want me to go to, you’ll pay for it. If I dress like you, act like you, you’ll keep me safe. If I let you have sex with me, you’ll hold my hand, you’ll stay.
I know these things are thoughts and deals that anyone can make, but the difference between how an adopted person thinks and how someone who was kept thinks is sort of like the difference between how a Vietnam war vet thinks, I imagine, and someone who stayed home in the 1960s and went to college instead of getting on a plane and picking up a weapon. Both will later negotiate for life-needs, but one is doing it at a level so deeply tied to terror that the other can’t even begin to feel.
If you are having a knee-jerk reaction to me comparing adopted people to war vets, I won’t be all that surprised, but I’m leaving it in because it feels right to me.
I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot lately, about our sense of a north star, about lives well lived. I’ve been thinking about habits and calcification. I’ve been thinking about tight bodies and hunger.
When I’m with groups of adopted people I often have the sense i’m with a bunch of bombs that are ready to burst open, only their wire is wet, only their explosives have aged, only they are terrified of hurting others. When I talk about adopted people, I am, of course, also talking about myself.
I learned not to explode when I was born. What good does crying and screaming do when it never ever ever brings to you want you want? You learn other methods of surviving: you turn yourself inside out to get away from the agony of not being met at the finish line. Are you kidding me? Nine months of flesh-stretching work and then the near-death squeeze of welcome to the world and she’s not here? If she’s not here, I’m not here, so what is this all about and how can I survive?
I imagine how my gut felt as I lay in the hospital, as a newborn, and I imagine that my brain did not have the tools to deal with the insanity of what had just happened, and so I learned to turn myself inside out, like a baggie. Instead of keeping terror and rejection fisted in my belly, I could evacuate, flip the sense of self so it was not personal. The tragedy, of course, is that a body can not do this, and so the fist stayed inside, but inside of what?
If this sounds redundant to you, like something I’ve said a million times in different ways, welcome to my brain. I’m still trying to figure out what happened to me when I was young that makes it so confusing to be here now.
It’s so hard writing about a life that most people don’t experience! I did not learn to talk about what mother/self loss felt like in school, so I’m left trying to explain to you something you can’t see and then don’t believe exists. You think you see me. And this is part of the negotiation. I’ll pretend I’m there because the alternative is to roll up into a ball and die.
One of the easiest things to dream about as an adopted person is food. It’s tangible. It goes in the mouth and the body gets to feel cared for or the sweet relief of feeling steamrolled. It gets to feel something, or it gets to numb out for a bit. Maybe if I eat this I will feel better. Maybe if I eat that I will be happy. If I’m good, I can have this. If I’m bad, I won’t let myself eat that for a week. If I just get through this day, I can sit in my car and eat a an entire cake with my bare hands.
Thinking about food keeps me busy so I don’t have to think about what I really want to do with my life.
When my writing feels all over the place, scattered, unfocused, I feel particularly like myself, and particularly out of control, in danger of being dismissed.
Who will tell me to stop, to focus, to get to the point?
What if I’m the one who tells myself to stop?
How can I dream if I don’t let myself make a mess, not make sense, wander?
I’m adopted, but I love my parents. They took care of me. They bought me so many things.. Many times when people talk about their adoptive parents, money comes into the conversation one way or another. It’s a weird feeling knowing someone signed papers agreeing to pay for your things—your food, your clothes, your housing, your dental appointments—until you…when? I’m not sure.
If I didn’t think about food or money, what would I think about? If the universe had whispered into my ear when I was born I swear to Lord Buddha you will always be okay could I have snuggled into my own skin instead of living Freakoutville?
When the connection between mother and child is torn, is the price the child’s ability to dream?
When a tree loses its roots, what happens to the tree?
