An interesting thing I learned about violence

You know as soon as I say that I feel like what I post, you will all say, oh no, we all already knew that, and you were the one not paying attention and staring out the window.

But I will forge ahead in my foolish shoes that have all the mud that angels fear on them.

So back to my IRL friend Marlie, that doesn’t blog but should. Marlie is an adoptee like MEEEEEEEE, Marlie got married ridiculously young like meeeeeee. Age 17. ( I was 16 ha ha, she was an old maid…)

She married a man, and loved and supported him for 8 years, and then, and then he took out a gun, no first he took out a stethoscope, and found his heart, then he put a special piece of tape on it, so he would know where it was, and then he took out a gun, and he put hollow point bullets inside of it, hollow point, this experience taught me, explode once they make contact, so when he shot out his heart he actually left 5 small bullet holes in the wall behind him.

She came home from work with a video. He didn’t watch it.

I am not meaning to write about this part of it, but I will have to anyway now I realize, so I go up to see her, and scrub floors because you know the police don’t do this, she called me and said, “you have to come, my mom (adoptive) is coming, you have to protect me” So I did. She was raised in a religion that doesn’t accept gays, her brother is gay, although he is a real kid.

At one point after all the details were being taken care of and death has a lot of details, we all went out for dinner, me, Marlie, her natural half brother Jake, Her abrother (real kid) Max, and her amom. God it seems like at least two someone else’s but I can’t remember who, we were a big table. Amom starts relating some hilarious story about how Marlie was a difficult child. And then accentuates it with, “of course no one told us this at the adoption agency Something about how she snuck out once when she was 14.

Max says, “like they got that much choice with me” as an aside to Marlie, Yeah Max!

Then amom starts to relate a story about how I was a horrible child as well, (she was a friend of my amom) and I turned to her and with ice in my eyes say, “you know, I am no longer 14, but I would be happy to tell you all a story about something I have done while drunk, who wants to hear it?” I mean if you want to humilate me, lets get to it. P.S. I was never a shitty teenager, I wish I had been.

I have an innate gift for shutting people down. No one wanted to hear it. Their loss.

Okay, so years pass, Marlie decides to go and save the world, I can’t think of a more compassionate candidate to do that.

She is at a training on how to deal with domestic violence, with the victims of domestic violence. She calls me in tears later.

Marlie: “I sat there in tears, for the first time in my life I felt like people were talking about my story with my husband, I went there as an outsider, but realized that all the years I spent with A. before he died, all the years that I felt like if I didn’t do the perfect thing, if I failed him he would kill himself, he didn’t threaten my life, but it was just the other side of the same coin, it was a constant threat of violence, a constant fear of loss of life, it made more sense to me than all the su*icide survivors groups I tried to go to” (She tried to go to the groups but found them so false and patronizing that she actually stood up and told them all to go fuck themselves, I heart Marlie) ” I was his prisoner”

Of course she finds this very conflicting because she loved him deeply and yet he caused her great harm, and abandonded her once again.

So what does this have to do with adoption in my adoption blog? I am glad you asked.

I thought of that today, when thinking of adoptees who have hidden reunions, hidden feelings, when I hear aparents say it would “kill them” if their adoptee searched or thought they had another parent.

Adoptees saying, “I can’t tell my aparents, it would kill them”

Maybe their aparents never explicitly told them this, maybe they did. Regardless, they got the message.

And they don’t find it violent, because like Marlie they were convinced their aparents were the victims.

They don’t find it abusive to be held hostage to such a needy demand.

I do.

What is the other side of that coin?

The other side is I will kill you.

I will devastate YOU.

I will make you disappear.

I will cut you off.

I will make you feel tremendous guilt.

I will make you feel responsible for my life.

Not good. Not good.

Not a healthy loving response from a parent, and don’t cry to me about how old your parents are, it doesn’t matter, unconditional love is just that , unconditional, children deserve that.

We all deserve that.

It is nothing short of abusive.

I make no apologies for acknowledging that as I did today, I only hope that people who are held to that, can acknowledge it for what it is as well, and give themselves a bit of self love and heal from it, and stop making posts about how righteous and pissy they are.