Pressure like a drip drip drip

That'll never stop. Whoa-oh. 

I'm not sure where to begin. I sort of stopped sharing on here because I'd started to feel a little bit like a sideshow act, which I'll talk about, but I've hit my limits on triggers and pressure and my therapist wants me to write about it, to get it out of my head, so here we go. 

There are a lot of traumas that adoption gave me, but there's one I've always struggled with when it comes to folks outside of my family and that's feeling like entertainment. It's been there since I was old enough to have the words to talk about my adoption (which was pretty damn young honestly): people, strangers, acquaintances being just so damn FASCINATED by my story, like I exist for their entertainment and not my real goddamn life. 

So as I've become more open and vulnerable talking about it and sharing myself, I walk a tight rope of becoming fodder for folks' entertainment, their goddamn mystery podcast to stay tuned into, to find out what happens next. The incessant questions and the salivating fascination is almost worst, sometimes, than the folks who argue with me (as if you can possibly argue with someone's lived experience). But the argumentative assholes I can fight with! I can shut them down. It's the popcorn eating, gawking, mesmerized adoption-story addicts that I struggle with, with their constant questions and their rapt, insatiable gaze.

How do you tell them that you're not there for their amusement and this is your very real life that you have to live every damn day? They're not bad people. They mean well, but it's othering and it's diminutive and it's patronizing. 

It's happened for as long as I can remember and it's turned me into the kind of friend who doesn't interrogate, who doesn't ask a lot of questions. I figure that if I make myself open and show support, they'll share what they want to share and, if they don't, then it's none of my business. I've been accused of being a bad friend, because I sometimes don't know all the details of someone's life, but it's because they didn't tell me those details and I feel like if they wanted me to know, they'd tell me. 

And, don't get me wrong, I always appreciate the open-ended questions of support from those closest to me! The types of questions like, "How is your such-and-such thing going?" Or, "Are you up to sharing how you're feeling?" Or simply, "I'm here if you want to talk." It's the support, not the questions, that I appreciate. It's the interrogations I do not appreciate. 

It makes me feel like a circus act. 

So, yes, that's why sometimes I'm open and sometimes I'm not. 

But, when I do share, I want to feel seen and understood. I hate having to explain myself over and over. I hate feeling like folks aren't listening or only hear what they want to hear. This is universal to humanity, probably, but it also comes from never really feeling seen my whole life by the people who mattered the most. I do have some folks, now, who really truly SEE me, and for those people, my love is endless. It's the most valuable thing.

But I'm tired of explaining that my adoption trauma isn't just because I was abused. The abuse compounded my trauma, but the trauma started before I was even born. 

About 7 or so years ago, when I was with Therapist Number Two, who was a childhood development specialist, she took out some charts and showed me what fetuses experience in utero and what they experience after birth and how their brains develop based on events during gestation, immediately after birth, and into their early childhood years. The charts showed how both positive and traumatic experiences cause a brain to develop. 

She explained to me how my birth mother likely disconnected with me during her pregnancy (for her own self-preservation, and now that I now I was her second relinquishment, I know she was likely preparing herself for a pain she knew all too well) and how that affected my development. She explained to me how what happened at my birth: being taken away, never being held, never being named or talked to by the one familiar person I'd known, missing her voice and her smell, how that likely caused my brain to develop. She explained to me how subsequent foster care and then eventually a new family and that instability for several months cause my brain to develop. She explained to me how those early experiences laid the groundwork for my future development and how then having insecure attachment to my adoptive family and eventually abuse in that family compounded those early experiences/traumas. She explained to me that those early traumas were already set before my abuse began and couldn't have been changed by anyone once they happened and it's not my fault that I developed that way. I had developmental and preverbal trauma. 

Like a chronic illness or disability, I have to live with that. I was literally born this way.

One of the ways that has manifested for me was feeling like I was never good enough to be in my family. I always felt I had to prove my worthiness to them, that I had to earn my place there, which was never guaranteed, only granted. This was compounded, of course, by an abusive narcissist mother who absolutely made me feel like I wasn't good enough and who literally made me perform for her, but it's common issue I hear among many other adoptees I know, including those who were raised in loving homes. When your first breathing experience is abandonment, it's no wonder that we never feel good enough. 

I was talking about this with another adoptee some weeks ago and she said she'd thankfully stopped feeling that obligation or need to feel good enough from her adopters and I thought about it and thought, yeah I have let that go from my adoptive parents. I don't necessarily feel that attachment or need to them anymore. But then I realized that I've since applied that same need to everyone who might dare love me. And I mean everyone. Well fuck. 

It doesn't always come up, because admittedly, when things are going well for me, I do okay. But when I'm struggling, well, I immediately feel not good enough and unworthy of love or attention or support. This has really bubbled up like Old Fucking Faithful the last month or so as I've been struggling to pull in money. 

Last year, as I started my business and took the brave step to do this thing I've always wanted to do, I did pretty well! My unemployment had just run out, but I did have that to live on for most of the year before I started my own thing and then I made decent money until the end of the year. But this year has started slow and I'm not booking clients fast enough at all and I've been hustling finding as many side gigs as I can and making very very little money doing that and I'm physically and emotionally exhausted from working my ass off for very very little and that leaves me in a vulnerable place for old triggers to really really work their bullshit on my sad, tired brain. 

I feel low. I feel worthless. I feel demoralized and unvalued. And my higher brain does blame two big influences: capitalism and my dad (my dad should blame capitalism too, but that's on him). First, my dad: because he was raised in poverty, and struggled over my childhood to support his family, the only thing he's ever verbally been concerned about was money. It's his one worry (that he talks about anyway) and it's all I ever heard from him. My whole life, he's been nothing but supportive of everything I do. He's never criticized anyone I dated (which maybe he should have) or what I chose to believe or how I live. He's never made any kind of comment about me ever, except when it comes to money. Money is the one thing he asks about, has ever asked about. He wouldn't care what I was doing with my life, as long as I was making money. 

It's no wonder I base my worth on my ability to support myself. With my mom, at some point I gave up trying to please her, because literally nothing was what she wanted or was good enough. But my dad? My dad who I had a closer connection to and who only had one metric of being happy with me? That's been harder to let go of. 

And, of course, that brings me to capitalism, which we're all victims of, my dad included. I could rail about capitalism for years, so I won't dedicate too much time to it today, because who has the time for that? But needless to say, it's no wonder that we all struggle when capitalism has its boot on our necks, when a global pandemic has gutted our literal lives and the powers that be have, once again, chosen to expand their pockets through exploitation and profiting off of mass death instead of valuing human life. Of course. It's the makings of every revolution in history. 

And my therapist WANTS me to rail against capitalism, to rage against the machine, to blame the powers who created these conditions. She wants me to put my anger on the people it belongs to and not myself, not blame myself or base my worth on my ability to function in a rigged system. Have I mentioned I love her? I agree with her! Absolutely! My higher brain is like, HELL YES DAMN THE MAN! But the traumatized infant adoptee inside of me is having a hard time understanding that. 

And, what's interesting, during the first year or so of the pandemic, when I was making unemployment, despite the depression and the death, and the fear, I felt real value in my life at that time. I was making my home nice and expressing myself creatively and connecting with my community and having real quality time with my husband. I had enough to live on but didn't feel like I needed to run on a hamster wheel to prove my worth. My daily life felt full and valuable. I don't want a monetized life; I want a valuable one! I want to follow my stupid fucking dreams without feeling like I can't hack it.

But today? Today I just feel nonstop pressure. I am running on that wheel and getting nowhere. I'm not looking for advice. I BEG OF YOU not to give me advice, and I've got a few leads on potentially better part time work than what I've been doing, but what I need is a relief valve somehow, some of that pressure to lift. I'm sure I have to do that myself, but I'm just so fucking tired.