Everything up to this point has been an amalgamation of different posts from different sources that Ive been storing up for years. I tend to get all gung ho about something and then lose interest rather quickly so we’ll see how this round goes.
I like to think my story is one people need to hear. It’s not the worst by any stretch but, since so few former kids in care ever speak of their experience, at least it’s out in the world now for people to see. Even in that sentiment I waffle. I think it needs to be heard alternates with “no one is going to care.” I guess time will tell.
Ive psychoanalyzed the hell out of myself as though knowing the name of the issue somehow makes it fade away into the shadows. My fight or flight reactions didn’t stop when I aged out. They continued through two failed marriages and four kids I basically abandoned and still continue to this day. I know Im doing it but it doesn’t seem to even slow me down. Like a train wreck Im already off the rails.
I tell myself, and anyone who will listen, it’s better for the kids and really, it probably is. But when you break it down to it’s base form I abandoned all of them. I did to them exactly what had been done to me.
The cycle repeats. And repeats. And repeats.
I can only hope I gave them a bit of a fighting chance at normalcy. A chance at a loving home with loving parents, they are with their biological dads and new moms now, but then I guess that’s probably what someone hoped for me once upon a time and look how that went.
I hope someday they can forgive me for being so incapable. I miss them fiercely and try not to think about it much as it just makes me cry and no one likes to cry.
That in itself is strange to me. For years I was emotionally flat. I had no sadness, minimal empathy and basically went through life as the happy-go-lucky party girl that everyone wanted to be around. At least that was my public self. I think I learned as a child that everyone liked the happy soul. Everyone wanted to be around that person and I wanted people to want to be around me. Privately I was silent and despondent, a flat line of emotion. At some point, only in the last 8 yrs or so, the two personas combined, or rather the emotional self held a coup d’état and the floodgates opened.
It’s not fun. I don’t like it. I want my armor back. Ive always been fairly antisocial and enjoyed my solitude but I need it now. I need that regrouping time or I get overwhelmed and flustered and simply cant deal with my life at all. Everything becomes overly dramatic and, while I can see it happening and Im aware of the ridiculousness of it, I don’t seem to be able to even slow it down.
A people pleasing extrovert transformed into an overly sensitive empathetic introvert.
See, I do like my labels.
Now I know what it is but how the hell do I fix it?
Heartache, hiccups and hope 