Love Denied

All my life, love remained a mystery to me. In certain ways, I grew up without experiencing it, the way every child should. However, love was always something I could watch from the outside.

Short after my birth, my life got tested in some horrible ways, so that I learned very fast that there is no place for any feelings at all. Just a few days old, my parents wanted to get married, what ended with my mum saying no in the church, because my father decided to have a nice little affair with my mum's best friend in their bedroom the night before.

With this, the marriage was off, and my mum took me out of the apartment to move back to her parents.

And destiny stroke again, while living at my grandparent’s house. Just a week or two old, the house burned down. Everybody got out in time. However, my grandfather had to run back into the inferno to get the dogs out. After that was done, my mum arrived at the scene and asked about me. Small problem, I was still laying in my crib. I am not sure how much of a scene my mum gave them for forgetting me, but during that my great-cousin simply stated, that it was more important to get the dogs out than the newborn me.

It ended with my grandfather running back inside to take me out as well. It created a lifelong fear of fire for me, that during my ongoing childhood created a lot more trouble.

After that house was gone, my Mum brought me to my father’s parents. Just for a few weeks, until they decided that I am better off with them than with my mum. So they denied her any contact to me what she answered with calling the police to get me out. And the police got me out of there, but instead to give me to my mum, I got brought to an orphanage, where I stayed for more than a year before I got adopted.

All that happened within the first three month of my life.

After the adoption, the “love” I experienced was kinda strange. Wooden spoons were smashed on my bare bottom; I probably spent most of my childhood under house arrest, which meant I was only allowed to leave my room at mealtimes. Building up relationships or friendships were out of question.

Nowadays, I know that love was something I hardly experienced during my growing years and even afterwards I had trouble to love someone. My relationships were more like affairs, short lived. The first time I really felt love, was when my son got born.

And even that story taught me, that love is not lasting in my life. With the raging family war, that started after I found my biological family, and my son’s mother running away, because she felt she was too young to have a family on their own, her parents decided I could not be a good father and therefore my son should live with them. And since they hated me from the beginning, they even took care that I lost the right to see him. And I voluntarily agreed to it, simply because this way I could be sure, that he is growing up without having to deal with the family war around me.

But the birth of my son gave me an insight into what love actually feels like for real. The memory of his smile, gave my life a new direction. It was a bit like, he opened the gate of love for me and I hesitated, but at the end walked through that gate into a better life. The trauma of my childhood is still something I have to deal with. And my fiancé can tell a story about how difficult it is to make me feel loved sometimes.

As a poet and writer I wrote a lot about the love I could watch unfolding in front of me, the love I wished I could explore and feel. But…