Love. Intimacy. Adoption: Separate but Somehow Intertwined

Adoption has given me a lot—a permanent family, a place to call home and also, trust issues. I’ve always thought if my very first relationship was severed, at my birth mother’s will, nobody would ever want to “keep me.” I grew up with this idea in my mind but nobody to actually hear it.

I simply believed that I was unlovable.

I wasn’t created by intimate love. My biological mother was violently raped, leading to my conception. The only child out of five that she relinquished to adoption, it was ME that could never be beautiful enough for her to love and keep.

I experienced secondary abandonment shortly after my 18^th birthday. My mom, who had adopted me as an infant, was upset that I had become pregnant as an unwed teenager. She gave me an ultimatum.

“Abort the baby or you’re no longer welcome in my home or my life,” she told me on Mother’s Day in 2002.

Abortion wasn’t an option. I kept hearing this voice inside myself, “if your bio mother would have aborted YOU, you wouldn’t even be here.”

Parenting my firstborn son was the only option, at the expense of losing my 2nd mother. Not lovable enough to be kept a second time.

I set out into the world very much alone as a young adult. Relationships and intimacy seemed impossible knowing one thing to be true: I would never be good enough to be loved.

I married my son’s father, forever love, possibly? I believed maybe this was it? Until the first time we fought and he yelled, “I’m done with this marriage!” Over the course of 20 years, he told me this countless times. It’s always been his “go to” phrase…and it broke me a little more each time he threatened it. It was always a reminder that I wasn’t worth keeping, even to the man who vowed he wanted me forever.

Intimacy became complicated to me. I began to HATE the word “love.” Hearing it felt like a lie and physical intimacy felt impure, often promoting a bodily response that felt like bugs crawling on my skin.

How could “love” be real when both of my mothers discarded me?!? Why should I share my body, “make love” to someone who repeatedly made it clear they weren’t there for the long haul?! Was “love” as a concept one big, fat LIE?!?

I’ve never felt secure in a relationship. ANY relationship. I am rarely brave enough to tell someone I love them, even if I feel it in my soul. And on the flip side, I get wildly uncomfortable when someone tells me they love me. My best friend tells me daily how special I am to her. She sends social media posts, texts—she shows up to EVERY SINGLE THING that’s important to me. My best friend showers me with love that I often am too afraid to feel and while I love her more than any friend in this entire world, trust her more than any human being, I am often too terrified to even tell her.

Growing up, I thought love would equate to permanence. As an adult, I’m not sure I believe in love at all.

I dream of a love without conditions or consequences, a love where I know I can stay wrapped safely forever. A romantic love where I can be comfortably intimate and feel beautiful sharing my naked body.

Knowing nothing about my rapist biological father for the entirety of my life has created its own issues with physical intimacy for me. I forever carry the worry that I’m “gross” or “dirty” because of my father. I’m a kind person with a gentle heart but I often classify myself as “50% hidden monster,” solely because of how I was created. This quite literally displays the complications of “missing and difficult information” when we discuss Stuck Spots in adoption. When you don’t know, you imagine or make up your own story. My fantasies about my biological father have rarely been whimsical. When I think of him, the man who made me, I imagine him to be ugly, dark and daunting. I paint him as green and furry— with warts all over his body. He has snaggle teeth and empty, dishonest eyes.

“YOU’RE the reason I can’t be loved!!!” I screamed to the night sky as I sobbed on the beach one late summer night, thinking somehow this stranger could hear me across continents. He’s a mystery who lives inside my mind daily, that reminder that forever whispers, “you were never wanted from day one, an accident created from violent trauma.”

As I sit here in my 40’s, I no longer scream at the sky to express sorrow about my adoption intimacy issues. Instead, I curiously and quietly ponder much deeper questions.

Does true love even exist? If so, will it ever be something that I can welcome in my life? I wonder if, one day, my bare body will be laid down and intimacy will feel safe and secure, not subjective? I question if I’ll ever believe my best friend can actually love me for a lifetime…?

Love. Intimacy. Adoption.

Three separate words that my adopted self won’t seem to let me find a way to intertwine. Even as a writer, I have them carefully separated by periods, keeping them completely apart — but close enough to partially coexist. My goal: that one day they’ll comfortably coexist.

My adoption journey didn’t end at placement. It’s walked alongside me for my lifetime, constantly sprinkling little reminders along the way that I’ll always be adopted. Sometimes it speaks louder than others, but the voice always exists and the journey always continues.