It’s the nature of relationships, even with those you love, that there will be disagreements, even conflict.
I’m about to spoil the ending for you: a few weeks ago I asked my created family to go through the legal process of adult adoption and they said no. I won’t go into details here of conversations had because it’s irrelevant but I will talk about the impact it has had on me, how I navigated through it and what I see things looking like going forward.

First, it was hard for me to articulate this need. It took me a long time to build up the courage to ask and it wasn’t until I had the encouragement of my therapist that I felt comfortable asking. ‘You may always struggle with feeling 100% a part of your created family but if they do decide to say yes: I do think it will help with that’. After therapy, I reached out to my best friend and was like: What do I do? She told me: ‘you have a right to ask for what you need and want’ and reminded me how much they love me. My best friend’s statements meant the most because they were coming from a place of deep knowledge of my biological family and the trauma I had experienced, first hand. So I did it, I asked. I waited a week before I got my answer:

“No. We love you and also no”

I was devastated. Of course, in my mind, I had to battle through the intrusive thoughts: ‘I can’t believe you thought they would love you’; ‘seriously, how childish do you have to be to ask for something like this’; ‘just get over it- you’re never going to have this’. All of these thoughts, and more came rushing into my head, immediately. As far as I’ve come in my healing journey- that part of me, the child inside me and the adult I had become were hurt, crushed, and felt incredibly alone.

These thoughts are just false, none of them have a basis in reality. My created family does love me, it wasn’t childish to ask for this, and I can be upset if I need to be. I have gone through a lot of therapy to get to the place I am now- to be able to eventually get to a place where I can process through those thoughts and know (eventually) that they were false.

For the next two weeks, I forced- yes forced… kicked, screamed, and cried while telling myself I needed to talk about it. I was embarrassed and I would burst into tears unexpectedly and all I wanted was to crawl back into myself: to before I had opened up about any of this, before I told anyone what happened to me. I didn’t want to tell anyone else about what happened… but I did. I hated it. I reached out to my best friends, and my husband, and my biological brother and let them know what happened and how I was feeling. They were incredibly supportive. I needed this. I needed their support, understanding, anger and love to recover but I still wanted nothing more than to hide. It brings me to tears as I write this because I desperately wanted nothing more than to disappear.

I’ve talked about, in previous posts, my general ‘sheer force of will’- a reckless determination to survive that has been with me as long as I can remember. I talked about how it has gotten me through the worst moments of my life. It is that same force of will that gets me through moments like this. I didn’t want to tell anyone about how I was feeling or the impact it had on me. I wanted to rebuild the walls I had worked so diligently to dismantle. I wanted to close myself in and never open the door again. I wanted to write reminders to myself on the inside of those walls how shitty I was feeling so that I wouldn’t dare, ever again, do what I had just done.

Those thoughts I had right after I was told about their decision were ultimately false but the pain and heartbreak were real. If it weren’t for my supportive unit which has so many amazing people in it- I don’t know where I’d be right now. I hated reaching out. I hated it more than anything, but I knew I had to. I knew I wouldn’t make it alone with my thoughts, and I needed perspective.

I share this recent heartbreak here, for one reason: to tell you that you need to reach out. You can bitch and complain and kick and scream while you do it, but if you have a person in your life that can support you in that moment: text them. Call them. Bawl your eyes out. Blubber and act like a petulant child. They will turn to you and say: ‘I’m gonna love you through it’. You don’t deserve to be alone. You know you deserve support- somewhere deep inside you, you know that you shouldn’t have to face this shitty world alone.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to the same place I was with my created family. I know they love me. I know that they feel like nothing needs to change because of this. I know they want good things for me and they will continue to be there if I need them. There are members of my created family that don’t even know this happened and they will offer love and support in spite of this. I will do the same for them. But this doesn’t mean that things will be exactly the same for me.

It will take me time to learn to trust again, and while I didn’t end up rebuilding that fortress, like I wanted to, I may have added a brick or two for security. I hope to take them down one day. I’m still healing. Things feel different to me. I hesitate before I share that thing that before I would’ve sprinted to tell them before. I see the words ‘emergency contact’ and I freeze. Not because I don’t think they would come or be there, or know the right thing to do or say, but this habit I’ve picked up of freezing when confronted with trauma, causes me to pause. ‘No its fine, I think, and write their names’ then I see ‘relationship: ____________’ and I freeze again. I repeat this process ad nauseam with every document I fill out, every time I renew my passport, get a new medical provider, or fill out a waiver. I hesitate. I confront my history, and my recent past. I continue on in spite of this reliving I am forced to do.

Some things feel the same. Sometimes talking comes more easily if I just avoid certain things. Sometimes I forget that this happened. Sometimes that relief is short lived, but those moments are nice all the same.
I wish it was easier, that people weren’t so complicated, and that trauma didn’t fucking suck… so so much.

But people are complicated, the world is a mess and trauma will never not suck.

So we keep reaching out: with a child-like hope that, one day, it will get easier. Because it will. Eventually. The important thing is that I’m here. I’m doing the work. And I will keep fighting and reaching out because

♬ ‘Mama said there’ll be days like this…
…there’ll be days like this my mama said’ ♬