How is it that deep down, even though these people hurt you, you still feel some kind of love for them?

I can’t imagine ever being part of their family again. It is not something I could ever want. It is not something I need. And yet, I miss them.

I miss the people who allowed so much pain to come into my life. I miss the people who withheld food from me. I miss the people who thought it was ok for me to be molested.

I miss the people who molested each other, hurt each other, and lived a lie. The people who used poverty porn to garner financial support in order to build a mansion. Yes…them. I find myself, at my very core, missing them.

Missing their voice even though what they had to say was so mean, negative, racist, vulgar, sexual, abusive.

I missed the warmth they gave me when they hugged me even though their breath smelled of alcohol, their hug was a little too tight, their touch lingered a few seconds too long.

Like a person who returns to an abusive relationship, I miss the “i’m sorry you feel that way but…” comments that made me feel so insignificant…like if it was my fault that the family was falling apart.

I miss sitting on my adoptive father’s lap as he demeaned me and told me that I could not go to a friends house because I kept wetting the bed.

I miss that bed that had such an intense smell because four out of the seven days of each week it was saturated in wet fear that never subsided until late into my teens.

That bed that held so many memories of molestation, saturation and anxiety. The bed I looked forward to sleeping in but dreaded the 1 am wake up time when my adoptive father would come in and check on us. He always came to me because he knew it would be wet. That pink bed with drawers matching the shape of the bed itself.

He would wake me up, take me to the bathroom that was close by and sit me on the toilet and wait for me to urinate so that I would not urinate a second time. Then he would find me some dry clothes, put a few towels on the wet part of my bed, and tuck me back in saying “I love you.” I was always very sleepy, eyes closed and yet very much aware that I was being woken up because I had wet the bed again.

I hated not knowing, or understanding why I was wetting the bed. Wetting the bed was for babies. I was always filled with embarrassment. I got to the point where when my younger siblings would wet the bed, I would be happy that I was not “the only one”.

Sometimes even, when I went the bed, I would go over to my sisters an d crawl in bed with her after I had found myself a dry pair of pants. I would get under the covers, shaking and shivering, I was so cold, and also sticky. She always moved over so that I could sleep beside her.

She grew up to be a supremacist.

And I didn’t understand until later. I didn’t understand my “wetting the bed” syndrome until I was in my mid to late 20s. It didn’t hit me until I brought to the forefront the sexual abuse I was experiencing at the hands of my foster siblings. But it took that long….that many years to better understand.

And yet, I miss them. I miss the family that raised me. I miss my two siblings who are white and know they are swimming in privilege and do nothing to mitigate the differences. I miss hearing them speak even though their speech is so toxic. I miss hearing them talk so fondly of their biological mother and how this woman could do no wrong.

Why would I miss them? How could I miss people who were so hurtful, so…wrong?

Maybe missing them is part of the healing process that can span a life time and I am just in a particular phase. Or maybe missing them means that I really am sick, like they said I am/was/always will be.

How can you miss someone who hurt you so much? How does anyone miss someone who only caused pain? How does a victim of domestic abuse stay with their abuser?

I think it is like what happens when you have kids. They become dependent on you and they really do not have an out. They don’t know that there are other options out there. They have been forced to use their abusers in order to survive.

I was abused in many ways but the abuse that sticks out in my mind, more than anything else, is the alienation I am experiencing as an adult. The lack of desire to talk about the abuse, talk about the treatment and talk about the ways in which healing can be addressed is probably the worst form of abuse for me. Because they don’t want to acknowledge the elephant in the room…even when I bring it up. Even when I state the obvious, they don’t want to show they care, to show it is important to them. That affects me to the very core.

Am I not important enough to also have the chance to find healing? But I want us to heal as a family. I want us to not go back to what it used to be, because what it used to be was horrible…I want us to live and exist in what it can be now. I want there to be a hope and a future for me and the people who raised me.

But if I am completely honest with myself, I have to admit that there is no way I will get my wish. I never got my wish as a child, why would I get my wish now as an adult? It will not happen. It takes two to tango and unless the other side wants it to happen, it will not happen.

So far I have been no contact with my adoptive mother for about 5 years. I have been low contact with my adoptive father and I have been even lower contact with the two siblings who are their bio children. The best decisions I’ve ever made was going no and low contact. But just because we don’t have contact does not mean we don’t think about what could have an should have been.

Many of my followers ask me if I would be be sad if they died. I was at a point several years back where I could honestly say no. I could say that if they died at that time, I would not care one bit. But now, after several years of carrying the burden myself, them being dead would only be more of a burden to those they leave behind. I have not shared this burden and it has not been put on anyone else in the family. The burden is mine to carry.

Having them alive gives me hope that one day they will want to share some of this burden I carry. I know I am reaching for the stars with this hope….but somehow the stars got up there so there has got to be a reason that we are both still alive.

I grieve not having a childhood. I grieve being trafficked as a child. I grieve not ever being a baby. I can remember hiding a bottle under my pillow when I was in my single digits because at night, I needed to have that bottle. Some kind of reassuring had to happen. Having the bottle was a reminder to me that I was once a baby, that I didn’t just step out of my mother’s womb as a seven year old. That bottle brought me an enormous amount of comfort. It made me feel like those phases I missed, could be relived.

Now as an adult I look back and realize how much of my life was dictated by two people who trafficked me and controlled every aspect of my life. I see that now as an adult, I need to focus on the things I can control. There is a lot I am not in control over, but there is so much I am in control of.

I wrote a blog a few months back about suicide. Suicide is a reality for many people and it for sure is a reality for me. When one commits suicide, one is taking control of something in their life. They commit suicide because they either have lost control or never had control of certain areas of their life.

For me, when I go, it will be by suicide. It will be by suicide because no one will tell me how I shall leave this earth. I was not given the choice how I entered and how I was raised….by God no one will tell me how I exit this world.

I believe in suicide because for me, it is the thing that is most constant on my mind. I can’t get it out. I can’t pretend the thoughts don’t exist. I can’t ignore the desire to be in a different place. I have no fear of the other world. I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. I believe in what we make of life here on earth. Some days I make it a heaven, and other days I make it a hell. There is only so much we can control.

So for me….I don’t believe there is any healing. I think we can make strides forward, to better our life here on earth. But to heal without a scab that continuously gets picked at….healing is far from real.

A friend of mine once told me that I needed to fix my ad for my course I was going to be teaching to a group of people. I took away from our conversation that healing may not ever come. We can’t really heal from adoption trauma, but we can learn to cope with it. So maybe healing is something that happens after we take control of our lives and pass on….or maybe it does not happen at all. No healing is coming my way….just ways to cope.