55 years and a few days ago, a 15-year-old Catholic girl gave birth in Arizona to a baby boy. She handed him over to her aunt and uncle, and returned to Canada, with her pregnancy now a family secret. The adoption was not spoken of to the boy until over 30 years later, when his adoptive parents had both passed away. The boy was me, of course.
The couple had had a miscarriage two years earlier. My father doted on me, but he died of cancer when I was two. I have no memories of him other than old home movies, now long lost, and stories my mother told. She clearly adored him, and I learned to idolize him without ever really knowing that much about him. I idealized him. But I credit those feelings with shaping who I am as a father to my son. I wanted to be for him all that I had never had.
My mother slipped into alcoholism, and I suffered complex trauma from it. When she passed away 24 years ago to the day as I post this, I mourned more for the loss of the relationship with my half-brother (from her previous marriage) than I did for her. He was the one who told me the family secret, then cut himself off from the rest of the family, myself included.
I tell myself, “It wasn’t as bad as others had it.” (But I hear a lot of trauma survivors say that.) I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t materially deprived. She was different when drinking than when not, though, and I didn’t know that was what was going on until I was 14. By then I had already internalized that the words “I love you” coming from her did not mean safety or comfort or anything worth trusting, really.
Which brings me to this: When I was 17, I had a dream and woke up thinking I was going to die at 24. In the dream it was around Valentine’s Day because, of course, symbolism: I felt I wasn’t lovable. I had enough self esteem that I couldn’t accept 24, so I thought surely it must have been 34 instead. I went through years and years feeling like I’d never live past 34. When I did, I started to think I wouldn’t make it past 42, then 44, then 54.
Again, a thing I’ve heard is that people who grow up with trauma like that, where they don’t feel loved, or loved enough, often feel like they’re going to die young. I did not hear this until I was well past 34. It is oddly comforting that I am not the only one. I’ve done a fair bit of therapy along the way. EMDR for PTSD was surprisingly helpful. But the middle of February is coming, and it’s still fraught.