When I was creating this blog I vaccillated between the names “icanhazbaby” and “bloodfromastone”. I can be a little overwrought and maybe wasn’t in the best place? Luckily I chose the lighter-hearted name, because the content is serious as a heart attack (which I often think I might be having, but instead is just endless stress that leads to pressure bands around my chest!). I sure don’t describe much that is cheery…but really, there is nothing particularly cheery about adopting a child through foster care – before that can even be possible, it means shit has gone WRONG, and gone wrong in a way that has seriously hurt children. There are no children in this system that have not been hurt. The VERY LUCKIEST are ones like Baby X1, who was taken for her protection, was lovingly cared for, and went home relatively quickly (about three months) after parents got everything fixed up. Or, like Baby X2, who came straight to us from the hospital, so she did not experience the direct abuse, neglect, and trauma that her older siblings did (except in the womb, which it turns out is a thing!). But she will still have emotional scars when she grows – the need to know WHY and HOW she came to be here, displacement from growing up black with white parents, and possibly some guilt that she doesn’t bear the scars her sister does.
X3 on the other hand is a classic case of everything being as fucked up as it can be – and how hard it is to be a good person and to fight through love as a verb in the hopes of arriving at love as a noun. The months since we transitioned her to our home have been the most challenging, heart-wrenching, overwhelming, exhausting, and doubt-inducing, time of my entire life. There is nothing I have ever done that has as severe and profound a consequence on another life; and nothing I have ever done that has so permanently changed my own life for, in the immediate, the worse. And if those aren’t facts to make you doubt yourself and all your life choices I am not sure what are!
Every day is just…exhausting. Because X3 is exhausting. I was so amused when a friend said, after an afternoon backing up my partner, “I’m really not sure how you do this everday. It’s just…so much.” It really is. And truly, my partner is the hero, because he does it EVERY DAY while I actually work A LOT, which creates a different level of chaos right now.
Every day with X3 is “fake it till you make it”. None of what is happening is her FAULT but it is … just kind of awful to be living with all the time. Like, for example, her constant, unending, need to touch me. Not a little. Like, have legs and arms wrapped around me, sometimes writhing, often panting, and, sometimes, licking or sucking on my skin… which seriously squicks me out. Luckily, she is not as weirdly physical with my partner, who I think would run screaming from the room. She just really, truly, entirely, has attachment terror, particularly with moms – she wants to be same/same with me every second on everything (dealing with the fact that we do not have the same skin and she did not grow in my tummy are already, somewhat early, being addressed very very frequently).
We are pretty sure that she was just left alone, starting at a very, very, young age. And she has had 6 moves in foster care, aside from the instability of her original life. It makes SENSE. It’s just…way way too much.
Or recently, finally, realizing fully what we already knew, that poor babyX3 has an average 2.5-3 year old vocabulary; and that’s a BIG DIFFERENCE at that age… She is not giving you that blank sullen look because she is, again, displaying ODD, ADHD, some form of dissociation, she actually has no fucking idea what you are saying. Words that only in the last week we have identified she does NOT understand include, light switch, home, uh oh, winter (any season, actually), creature, forward, turn, tomorrow, colors, and about a billion more. I am pretty sure she wanders through life in a fog of having no idea what anyone is saying, like being in foreign country, hearing a word here and there that she knows, and trying to guess? ignore? the rest. And the most frustrating thing, that she really cannot start learning, not intensively. Presumably, simply being in our home she is learning (for example she now, at very appropriate times, says variations on, “woah, everyone, there’s a lot going on here, let’s all calm down” – surely a phrase I have uttered about 8 times a day for the last four months…).
But she cannot learn, not truly, because she has complete trauma brain – any attempt to push on anything causes freeze and dissociation. I’ve been trying to encourage speaking and sharing experience and understanding – so, the other morning, we talked about things we like, i.e. I say “I like playing outside, and reading books, and so on” and then say, “What are some things you like?” to her…NOPE! Complete meltdown… after 20 minutes of my partner and I going back and forth…she GETS IT, starts whispering things she likes, and then chattering non-stop, and can’t be stopped! But, like…the whole experience of getting there. The same is true with school, where it literally took 8 weeks before she could remember her teacher’s name… And, it’s all because she is scared. Every second. Of every day. And I know it is only time that can heal it, but it is so so hard being in this stuck position.
In fact, today, she broke the button off her dress. She was scared about it and crawled into a corner, and was hiding in the corner when I walked in the house after work. Just before I walked in, she had asked my partner if I was going to hurt her. FOR A FUCKING BUTTON! When I walked in and said, “I would never hurt you, or hit you, or even be mad that you hurt a piece of clothing – we always have more clothes in this house” she just collapsed screaming and crying. And this is the EASY part! This I get, while still not ever being able to actually “get it”.
The other parts, the tantrums, the fighting, the need, the jealousy, the not-sleeping, the not-eating or binge-eating, the never-stopping-moving-for-even-5-minutes, the having to be treated as a baby, the demanding to do every single thing the baby does, the itching, the hoarding, all of this is the fake-it-till-you-mean it affirmative decision to parent. In theory, some day, we will feel love, instead of 10,000 forms of panic, resentment, sadness, pity, hope, hopelessness, and every other exhausting emotion that is just not the love you want to be exuding for your kid.
There are plenty of things that are good, they are just so…mild, or mixed in with the chaos, that it is hard to be focused on them – especially, when truthfully, we are resentful of the time she takes – we haven’t slept in the same bed in more than 3 months, we never see each other alone, we rarely speak of anything except her and how to help her, survive her, manager, her;, and, especially of the way that X2 is getting less attention than she truly deserves or than WE want to spend giving her. But, I am killing it at this hair game! We go for long walks, her on her bike and me pushing the stroller. During these walks (unless she turns into a nightmare and we have to go home) she is the most kid-like I have ever seen her. We stop and look at bugs, and flowers, and sticks, and helicopter seeds, and smell things, and find beautiful stone treasures.
She has moments where she laughs, and it is not the nails-on-chalkboard fake horrible sound she made when we first starting spending time with her. Sometimes she dances, and sings, and makes up stories that do not have violence in them. She has been learning to swim, and she LOVED going out on a paddle board (“the tippy little boat”) and jumping into the water!
She loves to help. She is brave, and strong, and fast.
When she is calm and in control of her body, she wants to please; but when she is not, she is more than the standard child as tyrant. She is, in effect on our lives, that abusive partner you once dated – demanding 100% of everything you have, giving little, controlling every moment, and doing it mostly because she is the victim of abuse and that’s the only way she knows to interact. But, she’s only five. So it’s our job – that we took on voluntarily – to somehow get her through this so she can become something more than her past, more than her trauma, more than the shell that she reverts to in bad moments.