Cheated

Bliss! Sunday was another wonderful day. It’s milder in the early mornings now, and the sunshine is so welcome on my skin. I did some tidying up from Saturday’s work before heading off to François and Eoin’s place to fetch some rocks.

The boys helped me load a couple of dozen rocks into the van, and then we came home, and I got to work on the new little bed that is in good sunshine and really tidies up a part of the yard that was particularly unattractive. And the boys said I can come back for more rocks, and I will. Now that I have access to rocks, I can do more edging and I can repair rock borders that are falling apart. I am thrilled with the new little bed. 

Last year there were many big chores to do. Reinforcing and re-surfacing the deck was an enormous undertaking, plus I built the new walkway through the yard and Joe, and I got a ton of felled wood from my lot into the shed for firewood. And all that work brought on a case of sciatica that took weeks and weeks to heal. This year, I am in good shape and there are no huge jobs for me to do, so I am having a ball attending to the details that bring God to my garden.

Once I had finished with the new garden bed, I took Sheba for a walk, and what a wonderful walk it was—my first wearing just a t-shirt on top. No hoodie, no coat, no cold. It was heaven. And our walk did what it was intended to do; it tuckered out Her Highness, and that meant she’d just sleep while I was at the concert.

And what a concert it was. I teared up as soon as the singes came onstage. Oh, how I love choral music, and oh how I have missed good professional artistry—truly professional classical singers on Gabriola! The organizers are planning on a night in early May on which they’ll present an Indian/Jazz fusion concert. I plan to go.

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I feel cheated.

For many reasons, we look back at times past—especially in our advanced years. I’ve been looking back a lot since receiving my C-PTSD/FND diagnoses. My breakdown has left me with both a physical (my symptoms) and a psychological legacy.

I grew up not knowing who I was. It’s an invisible deficiency, not having any history. I felt that nothingness acutely; it was worsened by the nothingness I felt between me and the Tyrells. I knew something was off, but in spite of that knowledge, I’ve found it shattering to have my experience labelled as abuse and deemed to be the cause of my breakdown and symptoms by my psychiatrist. It shatters me just to need and have a psychiatrist.

Last night, I was looking back. I started at the beginning. Françoise, my birth mother, had come to Vancouver to have her second child as far away from her religious French-Canadian Catholic mother as she could get in Canada. She was in an English-speaking home for unwed Catholic women, and she couldn’t speak English. She only had me and other mothers for company.

She said she kept me for six months. When I met her, 40 years later, she lied to me about who my father was, she lied to me about the nature of my conception (and later either corrected herself or lied again). There’s no way to know the truth; it’s a choice to believe that my story begins with 6 months with my mother, if I don’t make that choice, I have no knowledge at all about my life until I am adopted at two-and-a-half years.

I’m adopted by my abusers. But believing that they are abusers is a choice. It’s Dr. S’s theory. She has repeatedly explained how childhood negligence affects the brain. She understands my breakdown to be a delayed reaction to my abuse. 

I have a choice to believe her or not to, but to not believe her would leave me with this miasma of symptoms and to be unable to explain them to anyone—or myself. I had no choice but to believe her. Otherwise, there’d be only uncertainty. Friends unanimously took to the story that I can’t take back.

I believe there’s a link between my abuse and my being perpetually single. I had a partner, who had another partner and many other one-time lovers. I was co-responsible for the demise of our relationship. But thank God for that time I had with Steve. He’s been my brother, by choice, ever since. 

I understand religions as cults as an adult, but I was a fervent Catholic child. This unwanted baby and child without a story welcomed the embrace of the cult. I am profoundly grateful, however, to that cult for wanting me to have compassion and understanding as binary primary life values. I grew up ethically self-reliant; I can’t help but believe that the neglect of the Tyrell’s forced self-reliance on me.

Steve had an enormous impact on my life. When we had our first fight, I assumed our relationship was over. Steve had three siblings. I inherited a strong negotiator, and I had no negotiation experience at all. He was my first emotional connection to a person, my first experience with intimacy. When Dwight moved in, I got another brother. Living with these two wonderful men was my family experience.   

I feel cheated. That God who I strongly believed in as a child, let me down. I feel let down because I am broken, and it all began one day when I was six months old. Maybe, or maybe not then, but my story began one day after Dec. 4, 1947, when Françoise gave me to the church.

I once met another person who went through the same orphanage. She said that there were two different care protocols at the facility: one produced far more adoptions. If she was correct, I was in the other one. I was adopted at 2.5 years, just as I was aging out of the facility. I have a date on my adoption certificate. From birth to age 2.5 years, I have no memories no stories at all.

My first memory shames me. I was four. I pretended to be tangled in the jungle gym in the playground of my preschool. My first memory is not with the Tyrells. It’s on the jungle gym pretending to be unable to get down so that someone will come and help me. That’s where my story begins. I’m seeking attention and rescue. Interesting!

Thinking back last night, I feel cheated. I have no children, no grandchildren to look after me in my final years. Steve, I could count on, but he’s in L.A. Dwight, bless him, is executor of my will. Brothers. I’m counting on my one ‘ace in the hole,’ my one ‘get out of jail free’ card: I’m hoping self-reliance gets me though the tough years ahead, until this story with a vague beginning, comes to an end—of life and of choices.