The Manifestations

"(The pain of adoption) is something that can lie dormant most of one's life. If it erupts in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood and is dismissed as neurotic behavior or normal rebelion, it can subside into numbness. But it can stir malignantly in some adoptees all their lives, making them detached, floating, unable to love or to trust..."

Manifestations of occurrences in a baby's life are never to be underestimated.

Learning about how that affected me as a baby with results to be present throughout my life, has more than ever, helped me understand who I am and accept that as part of myself. Facing the fact that my birthmother abandoned me as a child has been the hardest thing. I would think that for anybody it would be very hard to imagine and accept being abandoned without pity while still a tiny baby. How can a baby be so bad and unworthy of the love of its own mother? That has created an inexplicable sense of guilt that has been haunting me since I have been aware of my own identity.

Sometime ago a very close friend asked me to try and find out the reason of my feeling of unworthiness, and after some reading and thinking, it looks like the adoption is the one to blame.
That would be explained by what Nancy Verrier calls the "Bad-Baby Syndrome", which basically is defined through a mother not giving away a good baby, therefore if my mother gave me away, I must have been a bad baby. This created a feeling of rejection and has been subsequently present in my adult life, where every slight rejection triggers the belief of being a "bad baby".
Hence I was bound to become a people-pleaser, a dreadful characteristic. To me, pleasing everybody means I will never get rejected again. To be able to do that, I created a fake self, where I can be two persons, using the most convenient one when needed. However the true self is never revealed, nobody ever gets a chance to see my real self.

Another characteristic that strikes me the most, is the inability to trust another human being.
That has always been a part of myself, whether it is perceived as a good quality to have or not. At this time of life, I would prefer to think that it has impacted me in a negative way. I say that because I've never been able to get close to anyone! That hurts because all human beings need to express how they feel, no matter then means they use. Having nobody to trust and to express myself to is painful. Needless to mention the inability to carry on a healthy relationship. One which there is love and trust as the foundation.
Actually, love is dangerous!! There will always be a need to keep a distance from other people as a way to be less vulnerable, not to get attached and take the risk of being abandoned again, not to reveal my true self and be rejected again. Skepticism in that way is a huge part of my personality.

An alternative way to prevent any future abandonment or rejection is to be in control of every situation. I've been several times labeled as a control freak, and I have never denied that; at least now I know where this comes from. It is almost intolerable to let anyone else be in control of my life.

In summary, some of the issues could be described as fear of rejection, lack of trust, fear of intimacy, loyalty, shame and guilt, identity and power or mastery and control.
All adoptees suffer a primal wound as a result of their separation from their first mother.
I believe that to live a life full of self-pity, wishing that it would have been different, would not help at all. The answer would be to acknowledge the fact and how it impacted my personality, acknowledge the difficulties it has created, live with this reality and learn how to deal with it.

I am now learning how to deal with all these emotions and am so grateful that I have a real friend to help me get through it. A most incredible friend, one who's caring, loving, understanding and non-judgemental, who knows what it feels like to be myself because he has himself, while a baby, been through the same experiences that I have.

Everything aside, healing is on the way and I cannot wait to see the better person I will become after healing my wound. Although the scar will always be there, visible, I will no longer be bleeding all the negative feelings. I will then have found happiness.