Sometimes I think being adopted is like wearing a condom all the time. You get to feel, but not completely, and both your vital energy and the ability to connect with the vital energy of others is blocked.

My body aches to feel completely. Human beings, I believe, are wired to feel love, to live for it, to work for it, to dream about it, to sacrifice for it, to exist for it. I’ve heard that when a soldier is dying, they often call for their mothers, the original fountain of love.

How can you feel love wholeheartedly when you can’t trust, when your body is on guard for danger, for loss, for the next shoe to drop? Maybe I should use “I” and really own that sentence. How can I feel when I can’t trust, when my body is on guard for danger, for loss, for the next shoe to drop? When my dog looks at me and I look at him and it seems like we love each other, my thought is, One day he will die and leave me. When I talk to a dear friend on Facetime and it feels like we’re really connecting, I wonder when they will start to hate me.

Now that I understand more about myself, I see myself as a Lego with some of the circles missing. The more technical term for “circles” is “studs”. Because I have the sense of humor of a sixth grader, I find this very funny. My studs are missing.  

Isn’t that the truth!

Anyway.

The way I picture life these days is that Lego-brick us is born, and the physical contact with our mother causes studs to pop out from our being so that her self and our self can connect outside of her body in a way that helps both our systems transition to this new relationship, inside to outside.

When this contact doesn’t happen, the baby Lego brick does not pop out all its studs, and, worse case, pops out none at all. Those are the babies that often end up as teenagers or adults either killing themselves or others.

Early in my life I learned that love was not enough from my parents for me to feel real. I was a Lego that didn’t have the satisfaction of full engagement with another—my whole reason for being—I mean, what does one do with a solitary Lego? They are created for connection.

I wanted two things from my parents to help ground me: food and money. Food was tricky because my thin mom and my thinner dad were both very aware of portions, both theirs and mine, and so I learned to sneak food, to eat massive amounts of cookie and brownie batter when they weren’t around because I was big and athletic and always hungry. I grounded myself that way, but this action still didn’t address the ache of feeling not-fully-attached to my parents and not knowing even what that achey, anxious feeling in me was, just that something was wrong.

I focused on money, how to get it, how to spend it. As fast as money came in, it went out. I bought a lot of candy. Later I bought books, records, clothes, gas for the car. I couldn’t work enough to satiate my desires. I began to steal, both money and things.

I could never get enough of anything, it seemed. This hunger kept me very busy.

I don’t remember ever sitting next to my father and putting my head on his shoulder. I don’t remember my mother ever calmly sitting next to me, fully present, asking me how or what I was doing. They loved me and I loved them. This is all so complicated. What if all food lost half of its taste for you. What would you do? Eat more? Eat less? Wonder what was wrong with you? Wonder what was wrong with the food?

Yesterday my father, who is now so old and skinny his body looks like a matchstick, told me a secret he said he’d never told anyone aside from a therapist. Every time I visit him, his grasp on reality is a little shakier, and he appears to be headed back to infancy. I think his normal defenses are wearing away, and suddenly he is able to share what for decades was unspeakable. I listened to him, and I could feel my body rearranging itself in a more orderly fashion. The truth can be medicine when it shows us that we were right, that our body was right—there was danger in the air when everyone insisted there was none. As he talked, I had two impulses, one was to listen without judgement so he could feel free and loved as he said this hard thing, the second impulse was to pray to the universe that he would die so I could have his money before the nursing home got it all. I wanted money to wallpaper over what I was experiencing: my father being human and vulnerable, imperfect and full of shame. I was willing to endure the time I was slotted to spend with him that day, but then I wanted him to disappear and for me to have handfuls of money to try to fill the hole.

I thought, This is my opportunity to cut myself off from him. He crossed a line with his confessed action, both in the doing it and in the telling me about it, and I have the right to disown him. This could be my ticket to freedom.

I stayed. I am experimenting with love. I am going back to see my father again tonight. I will go with him and get pizza and visit my brother’s family. I want to show my father he can tell another human a secret that has haunted him, and that he will not be judged or abandoned. What if my father lives so long there is no money left when he dies? What if I never get another penny from my father? What if all there is left for me to do is to love him as a human being and to take in his love for me without closing down, running away, or refusing it because it is somehow not the love I think I really want?

I don’t know, but I have this weird feeling that I’m growing studs. Being a real human feels like strange, disorienting, tiring, wonderful, muddy business today.

I feel lucky. It was never the money I wanted, never the stuff. I mean I wanted it, but I was so quick to give it all away.

I want to feel the universe loves me unconditionally.

That’s not exactly it. What I really mean is that what the deepest part of me wants is to feel unconditionally loved by myself so I can reach out from that place and love others in the same way. I want to feel connected, real. This is not something money can buy. I’ve tried. This is not something I can eat my way to.

I’ll start by driving back to New Hampshire, picking up my dad, getting pizza from When Pigs Fly, going to my brother’s house in Maine, and see what happens from there when I show up with my whole heart for all of it. Food may not be the answer, but pizza is delicious and fun to eat as a group.

Before this, however, this afternoon I got on my Peloton and added more than 100 points to my best output on a 75-minute ride. I had some feelings to burn through and off. That ride was amazing. I felt like I could fly.