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forever unloved
Oct. 15th, 2021 06:31 pmMy soon-to-be-late adoptive father told me on one of his last lucid days how he really felt when I was adopted. As he began, I geared up to grin and bare another retelling of the BS disney-like version of the story he's been sticking with for 4 decades. That version began with "It was a beautiful day in April when we brought you home," and basically goes on, we were as lucky to have you as you were to have us, and we all lived happily ever after. I've always hated hearing this story, because I certainly wasn't happy ever after. I was a kid who'd already been in 3 different homes with 3 different families, and they were my 4th. Instead of living happily ever after I grew up severely depressed, struggling to form connections with anyone, ultimately isolated and desperately lonely.
This new version he told me begins with the same beautiful day in April and quickly shifts to explaining that their family had already felt complete with the infant they'd adopted 3 years previous, and darkly turns to a confession that he didn't love me. He didn't feel anything like the love he felt for my brother, offering no particular reason why. I can fill in some reasons. It wasn't immediately rewarding to adopt me. He's the kind of person who had kids expecting to receive unconditional love, not for them to have complicated emotional needs. And the story wraps up with him saying that eventually he… uh… well… he came around to… uh… loving me. Yes he stammered it out like that and no, that's not how he normally spoke or how he spoke during the rest of the story.
Being unable to love a child with complicated emotional needs isn't something for which I'd condemn a person - the situation, right in its description, is fucking complicated. What I will condemn is that he stuck with the disney version of his fairy tale for 4 decades. When my own sentimentality toward him didn't live up to his expectations, he made me feel like I was somehow defective for the way I felt or the feelings I lacked, or the way I didn't feel loved even though my parents insisted I was. Things he said to me regarding my depression and inability to connect were outright cruel, as they along with anything else he didn't like about me was either mocked or ignored by my "loving" parents.
Certainly at a very young age, it would have been unkind to have told me that he didn't love me, but there were plenty of opportunities for him to open up over the 4 decades this went on. But it was always the same. He'd say he loves me, he'd say he was so proud, he'd tell me the disney tale another few hundred times, and he'd mock and or ignore everything about me that wasn't to his liking, and he'd openly comment on what a shame it is that we're not closer and we don't spend more time together. And he waited, intentionally waiting until the last possible moment (when he was really quite certain he'd never have another chance), to tell the truth. He intentionally waited until it would be too late for me to have any time to process this information and respond to it. He waited until the moment when he'd be able to tell me the truth, without him ever having to live with me knowing it. And that just about perfectly sums up the kind of dirty shitbag coward I think he is: self-serving to the end.
This new version he told me begins with the same beautiful day in April and quickly shifts to explaining that their family had already felt complete with the infant they'd adopted 3 years previous, and darkly turns to a confession that he didn't love me. He didn't feel anything like the love he felt for my brother, offering no particular reason why. I can fill in some reasons. It wasn't immediately rewarding to adopt me. He's the kind of person who had kids expecting to receive unconditional love, not for them to have complicated emotional needs. And the story wraps up with him saying that eventually he… uh… well… he came around to… uh… loving me. Yes he stammered it out like that and no, that's not how he normally spoke or how he spoke during the rest of the story.
Being unable to love a child with complicated emotional needs isn't something for which I'd condemn a person - the situation, right in its description, is fucking complicated. What I will condemn is that he stuck with the disney version of his fairy tale for 4 decades. When my own sentimentality toward him didn't live up to his expectations, he made me feel like I was somehow defective for the way I felt or the feelings I lacked, or the way I didn't feel loved even though my parents insisted I was. Things he said to me regarding my depression and inability to connect were outright cruel, as they along with anything else he didn't like about me was either mocked or ignored by my "loving" parents.
Certainly at a very young age, it would have been unkind to have told me that he didn't love me, but there were plenty of opportunities for him to open up over the 4 decades this went on. But it was always the same. He'd say he loves me, he'd say he was so proud, he'd tell me the disney tale another few hundred times, and he'd mock and or ignore everything about me that wasn't to his liking, and he'd openly comment on what a shame it is that we're not closer and we don't spend more time together. And he waited, intentionally waiting until the last possible moment (when he was really quite certain he'd never have another chance), to tell the truth. He intentionally waited until it would be too late for me to have any time to process this information and respond to it. He waited until the moment when he'd be able to tell me the truth, without him ever having to live with me knowing it. And that just about perfectly sums up the kind of dirty shitbag coward I think he is: self-serving to the end.
