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Adoption: Without you, I'll find me

Happiness is becoming less terrifying

By Jessica Jane MoorePublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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I was about 6, we went to the grocery store and I was in charge of crossing off the items on the list. After we were done before we went home we stopped at Wendy's for some fries. That is the only happy memory I have of my mom and I.

The things I do know about my adoption are I was born in Quito, Ecuador. My biological dad's name, the reason I was put up for adoption, the doctor who delivered me, my birth name and that I was born in May of 81 but I did not come to the U.S. until Oct. of 82.

My childhood was spent either trying to figure out why mom hated me so much or trying everything I could think of to get her to love and accept me. Just as she did with my two older sisters and younger brother. It wasn't hard to see that we weren't blood related to each other. My sisters and I are adopted from different parts of the world. And our brother is their biological child.

As it goes, they decided to adopt because they thought my mom was unable to get pregnant and as they were in the middle of my adoption they found out she was pregnant.

Now for as long as I can remember it was a running joke of sorts that when I got here I would only go to my oldest sister. I wouldn't go to my mom for what ever reason I bonded with my sister first. Every time someone would jokingly bring this up again mostly at family events, my mom would get real silent and it was clear she hated it but made sure she smiled and laugh a bit to seem like it didn't bother her. I believe it really hurt her more than angered her.

Appearances meant a lot to my family, still do, as long as everything looks great on the outside it's not important what's going on on the inside. On the inside I wanted to belong to this family that I was living with and stop feeling like an object that was easily tossed aside and forgotten.

I learned at a very young age how to not only detach my emotions from whatever was going on but turn them off all together. I mastered that skill before I was a teen. Something I'm not proud of but also not ashamed of it anymore.

My childhood and adolescence is pretty much text book. Filled with violence and hate. Trauma from years of abuse, chose to drink and use drugs to cope. Lived on the streets for a good portion of my teen years. The one big difference is that I had someone who protected me out there, there was a time in my life when I was still naive and innocent. A lot of the things that should of happened to me didn't because of this woman. And even though I didn't tell her till years later when we met I was 13. We stayed friends for over 20yrs. I knew her before I met the man who shares D.N.A. with my three sons.

Looking back at my life up until I was 17 I see now the very dangerous situations I put myself in and the things I saw would in no way compare to how much pain I had inside me and decided to ignore for years and not deal with it.

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