Body Shaming & Birthdays

 I turned 50 years old today, and for some reason, I thought of a phrase the adoptive mother used several times to describe how I looked. I had not thought about her in at least a day, which is progress for me, but the reminders of her venom hit me at the strangest times. I was reading The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook, which has photos of scenes from the show, in addition to recipes for dishes that were popular during that time period of the show's setting. I came to a recipe for "Punch Romaine," and the photo on the opposite page was of one of the actors from behind, the hair done up nicely and the sloping shoulders visible in a beautiful evening gown. 

Something as simple as shoulders that are vastly different from my own made me remember her meanness about my appearance. I hate when this happens, but I'm getting better at not letting these memories ruin my day. I notice variations and differences very easily, but I've never been one to think that one way is better than another. She did not share this view. Any trait or feature that was different from her or her biological children was automatically bad.

I was always tall and skinny, with brown hair and brown eyes, and apparently, she despised me for it. I grew up thinking I was disfigured and believed for many years that I was deformed because she almost always commented on and complained about my body, hair, skin tone, voice, face, and everything about me.

I believed her then (and for many years after) because why would she lie? I must have been defective for her to have to tell me almost daily about my "flaws." I constantly strived to be better and to not make her mad with my existence, but the rules changed every day. What pissed her off at one time was the same thing she'd praise me for 24 hours later, and vice-versa. It was crazy making for sure.

I was frequently criticized for being "too skinny," and when I was 15 and 5'11" and weighed 135 pounds, she told me out of the blue one day when she saw me bend down to pick up something from the floor, that "You look good now, but you don't need to get any bigger." She was obsessed with my height and weight and would give me absurd fashion advice that she thought would "hide" my height or make me look shorter and fuller.

I wrote about that before, but it still galls me to this day. Why in the hell did she think my body was her business, except as part of normal parenting in making sure I was as healthy as possible? 

I wasn't allowed to wear anything that showed my shoulders because, as she put it, I looked like "a worm with the shit slung out of it." Looking back, I realize that she did not want me to look attractive, but I wasn't allowed to be ugly outright because she couldn't parade me around to others to make herself look better by association. I was supposed to be "pretty" when she instructed, but not more than whatever image she had in her mind. Any characteristic I had that attracted attention that she couldn't take credit for was cause for almost immediate castigation. 

If someone dared say anything nice to me or about me in front of her, she would visibly seethe until we were alone, and then the claws would come out. I would then be accused of being "haughty" and told that if the person complimenting me only knew what I was really like, they wouldn't say such nice things about me.

This longstanding pattern of abuse set me up for further exploitation and mistreatment for decades. I only wanted to be accepted, never admired and definitely NEVER the center of attention. This made me extremely vulnerable to those with ill intent. I believed for years that people have good intentions, so I assumed that anyone who didn't openly disparage me like she did could be a friend. I was so accustomed to constant ridicule, so I was so relieved to not get that when meeting someone new. I mistakenly gravitated to what I thought was acceptance, and it was often to my peril. I was the figurative lamb to the slaughter for many years because I didn't know any better.

My birthdays were never good. She would decide that I had done something at some point and proceed to shake and slap me for it and throw in some more verbal abuse for good measure. A few of the birthdays involved getting beaten with a belt, and I remember one in particular that was especially brutal. I had done something serious and unforgivable like getting into bed and going to sleep in my nightgown, but without wearing any underwear. I was a kid and had the idea to do something different. My younger cousin was visiting, and I don't remember if she suggested it, or I did, but it was something along the lines of "what's it like to not wear underwear?" I don't know how the adoptive mother found out, or why she waited until the middle of the night to turn on the light and drag me out of bed by my hair, but an innocent childish act really set her off. 

Given how many other times she went berserk on my birthday, almost never getting me a gift and definitely not making or getting me a cake, I can't help but think that my bare ass gave her all the justification she needed (in her mind) to beat me senseless. My birthdays were almost always acknowledged by violence and were never happy.

It's painful enough getting beaten with a leather belt when wearing clothing, but it was excruciating on bare skin. What kind of parent finds it acceptable to treat a child like that? A truly sadistic one.

I look back at it now and see how worthless she must have felt, but instead of owning up to it and getting help, she projected it onto me and punished me for it. As I write these things down, I think about the experiences with a mature adult's perspective and have no explanation for her behavior, except for malignant narcissism.

I've tried to make my birthdays pleasant each year for the last few, and for a long time, they were usually fraught, and I just wanted the day to be over. I enjoyed today, and now that I've have lived to 50, I am determined to enjoy as much of my life as I can.

I am not defective. I never was. I simply had the misfortune to be placed in the care of a monster.

No Help for the Wounded

 

I woke up recently remembering the events of November 20, 1992 and after. The tibia fracture was pretty important, but it wasn't the big issue. The concussion from the fall was, and the resulting headache caused a problem with the adoptive mother. (I had slipped and fallen down a short flight of stairs on my way to a church service--I was the pianist.) 

After the visit to the ER where my leg and foot were set and wrapped, I was prescribed pain medication, and my leg and ankle were not hurting anymore, but I had a massive headache from hitting my head in the fall. The medication made me nauseated after I took a dose, and when I told her about it (when she asked why I was making a “sour puss face”) and that I was going upstairs to lie down, she asked me why I was nauseated. I told her it was probably from the medication. She asked me if I took it because my leg hurt. I said no, and that I took it because of the massive headache I had. She flipped out.

She called the hospital (or the pharmacist—I can’t remember) and asked them what my medication was for. It seems crazy now that they would have given her any information about me because I was 20 years old, and even then there were privacy laws. That makes me think that what she told me they said was just something she made up.

She told me they said I was NOT to take the medication for my head and to only take it for the fracture. She was livid. I never took anymore of the medication, and I wondered what happened to it because when I saw it again, there was almost none left. I now think that my sister-in-law may have taken it. I believe she was even then a secret pill head. She was way too excited about my medicine and kept trying to push it on me and asked me repeatedly if I needed any.

The older adoptive brother (husband of the pill-head) had been living with us. It was a good thing because he was the one who picked me up and put me in the car after the fall. They both waited with me at the ER and paid for my prescription. The adoptive mother did not seem to care one bit about my condition and was on his case about the insurance information and what he told the hospital. She and the adoptive father had gone to some kind of family reunion in MS, which is the only reason they weren’t there when I fell. I honestly believe that they would not have taken me to the hospital if they had been.

After about a week, Pill-Head told the adoptive mother that I probably needed to see a neurologist because of hitting my head in the fall and because of the severe headaches I had been getting for several years. I was still dizzy from hitting my head, and in those days, Pill-head knew that the adoptive mother was a tyrant and singled me out for tons of abuse. She just didn’t care enough to try to stop it.

The adoptive mother had no interest in taking me to some doctor in New Orleans. SIL worked at a clinic affiliated with West Jefferson hospital and was able to somehow get me an appointment to be seen pretty quickly. The adoptive mother took me. She made it clear that it was a huge imposition for her.

The neurologist told me and her that I did have a concussion. She also was very interested in my years of suffering from headaches that she diagnosed as migraines. She prescribed me Midrin to take for them.

The adoptive mother let that prescription sit on the desk in her room for 2 months before getting it filled. It wasn’t expensive.

When she was taking me to the neurologist, she told me that the reason I was going was because she was "so sick and tired" of seeing me drink coffee and take aspirin when my head hurt. She also told me on a different occasion (before the fall) that she had read that my headaches were probably migraines, and that "migraines are a perfectionist’s way of dealing with stress."

When I would get a migraine any time after that, she would ask me what I did to "cause it." I got them at least once a month, sometimes twice. Back then, they only lasted a day or two. They got much worse in the years after.

I was never able to lie down and rest when I got them either. I never missed school, and she forbade staying home from church if I ever had one on a Sunday. One time in particular when I was 17 or so, I was sitting in church, in the front because I had played the piano for the service that morning, and she could see me. She berated me cruelly after the service because I was not looking up at the minister during the sermon. I was in severe pain and was trying my damnedest not to cry from it, and she told me how rude I had been because I wasn’t looking at the minister constantly.

Any other time I tried to sit where she couldn’t see me. She would stare at me the whole time and would have a look on her face like she had smelled a fart, or she looked like she wanted to come over and set me on fire.

She used to frequently accuse me of giving her “go to hell looks,” and this was usually while she would scream at me or berate me for something that she had made up or blew completely out of proportion. Until I was about 15, she would strike me about the face and head, and then accuse me of giving her these "go to hell looks" while I stood there and just wanted her to stop hitting me and screaming at me. 

Actually, she was the one who gave me the mean looks almost every time she looked at me.

But really, how dare I ever have any illness, injury, or pain and steal attention away from her? How dare I be a human being with my own needs instead of merely serving as her repository of cast off shame?

But if you were to ask her--even today--what her issues with me were, she would likely tear up and tell you about everything she's done for me, tell you about all of my "emotional problems," and say I never appreciated anything, and that I never let her get me the "help" I needed. All she ever wanted to do was help me.

Yeah. Ok.

 

NO BOUNDARIES. Really.

Narcissists usually violate the boundaries of those around them and resent people for having any boundaries to begin with. In my own case, my narcissistic adoptive mother had an appalling sense of what was appropriate. Some of her worst examples are the following:

1. She doesn't respect your privacy. When I was 14, she told my adoptive father that I had no pubic hair, and that she was sure I was shaving it off. She was convinced of this, or that there was something wrong with me because I didn't have to shave halfway down to my knees just to wear a swimsuit like my adoptive sister (her biological child) did. That girl even had armpit hair at 9-years-old, which is odd to me. But she was the golden child. I was a late bloomer, and even today I would have a hard time growing the porn bush that woman had. How do I know what her pubic hair looked like? Because she was frequently naked around me. And how did she know about my lack of pubes? Because I had to be naked around her, whether I was ok with it or not.

And speaking of naked...


2. She has no concept of modesty. She chastised me for covering up. She would change tampons, wipe herself while sitting spread-eagle on the toilet, bathe, finger-douche her birth canal (it's the best way to describe her disturbing ritual for cleaning her weathered old stinkbox), and more in front of me. If I turned away or tried to leave the room, she would mock me for being so “modest.” She would leave the door open while she pissed and shat, regardless of who was in the next room. However, she would close the door if we had guests she didn’t know well.


3. She will tell almost anyone almost anything, no matter how private. She would describe her bowel movements in great detail to whomever happened to be around. She would talk about how she was “going little lumps” and that she wasn’t able to do any better than that. If the person being bombarded with this private and disgusting information made any sort of face to show their shock, she would talk about them later, saying they were too wimpy and delicate. Or dainty. Or not tough enough.


4. She is disgusting and crude. As if the above isn't evidence enough. When we were on vacation (when I was a teenager) we were at some park where they kept deer in a fenced-in area. Someone asked if there were any baby deer, and she replied that there were because, as she remarked about one deer, “Those tits look fresh sucked.”


5. She criticizes those who don't share her view of letting it all hang out. She would walk around in her bra and panties in front of my teenaged brother and his friends. One of his friends covered his face and tried to apologize for seeing her (even though it was her own fault), and she acted like he was crazy. She said, "Your mother must not walk around like this, or else you'd see that there's nothing wrong with it." When he said that his mother didn't, she laughed at him and later said that his mother "must just hide herself."


6. Her use of the English language is strange, both in public and in private. She was appalled that her children were teaching their own children to call their body parts by their correct names. Her name for “penis” was “goober.” Her name for “vulva” was “crack.” I still cringe when I remember her telling me and the adoptive sister, “Wash your crack.” Of course her telling any number of houseguests and anyone within earshot about my experience with chickenpox when I was five was traumatizing, you know, because she just had to tell them about me having blisters all in my “crack.” Lovely. She mispronounced words frequently and would get angry when someone used them correctly. The ones that come to mind are the anatomy ones, such as "va-janna" for vagina, "u-truss" for uterus, and "sera-vix" for cervix. Once I told her that I read that Madonna had been a member of her high school thespian club, and she said that it was gross that Madonna was a "liz-bee-an."


7. She's inconsistent with her speech and actions. She would say all the nasty things above, but she thought the following words were bad and wouldn't allow us to say them: butt, butthole, fart (which she said was as bad as saying "fuck"), any profanity (obviously), fag, faggot, queer (although she herself was a huge bigot), crap, and dick. She would say "twat" frequently, not as an insult, but in describing someone's "va-janna." So when she didn't tell me to wash my "crack," she'd instruct me to wash my "twat."


I do want to apologize for the nastiness of my writing. I can be crass and vulgar at times myself, but I use words to make others laugh, and I don't consider any words off-limits, provided the context is right. The thing that's important to remember is that people like her are missing the knowledge that other people are separate from them and have different opinions, wants, needs, and ideas of what's acceptable. If you don't think and act the same way as someone like her, she sees it as a threat, and then you will pay. And pay dearly.

The Myths About Adoption

Start at the beginning of this blog.

As previously mentioned, I went to live with them at age 3. I had a fairly established personality by that point, which would cause all sorts of problems...

When I've told various people that I was adopted as a child, I hear the following idiotic comments:


"Well, at least you knew you were wanted." Uh, no, I never felt like that. She actually said (to the adoptive father) when I was 13, that they needed to send me "back" because she couldn't deal with me anymore. I had put a bag of clothes down two feet too far to the left, and she hit the roof. Actually, she hit me. Repeatedly. Then she kicked me. Yes, for setting something down too far over.

"You were chosen." In my experience, being "chosen" meant getting singled out for a beating.

"You went to a better home." Maybe not. I went from a loving home--where I was cared for by my maternal grandparents--to a traditional, nuclear, "good on paper" family and was beaten frequently within a few weeks of arriving. 

The reason I was put up for adoption was because my grandmother had died, and my grandfather was too old to take care of two small children himself. I later found out that my birth mother was pretty worthless and neglected the both of us, but we were both adored by her parents.

It was the 70s, and support for single (particularly the never-married) mothers wasn't easy to come by, so without her parents to raise us, it was left to her, and she had never been too interested.

"Your parents love you as much as they love their REAL children." Yeah. Sure. She never hit her "real children" so hard they lost the hearing in one ear and saw black spots for several days. Her "real" daughter was taken to the doctor frequently while I had to suffer in silence over blood in my urine, trouble breathing, and brain-crushing migraines. 

I've had three major spine surgeries due to problems from scoliosis, which she saw that I had (and commented on frequently) but waited 8 months to take me to a doctor. I had already finished growing by that time, and there was nothing they could do. It certainly didn't stop her obsession with how "twisted" and "crooked" I was, according to her.

When she heard me wheezing (from undiagnosed and untreated asthma), she would get angry and ask if it was my "stress syndrome" making me do that. Sure, woman, it's "stress." I was diagnosed with asthma in adulthood when I was able to seek out medical care for myself. My situation was made worse by going so many years without treatment.

As I've written already, I am a pretty strong supporter of adoption. I think many times it works out better for the child and the parents. It's love that makes a family, regardless of DNA and who the kid looks like (or doesn't). 

I also don't judge those parents who regret adopting due to their child having severe attachment problems. When I first went online about 15 years ago to find others like me, I came up pretty dry. Most of what I read was anti-adoption views from women feeling like their babies were stolen from them, even though they made the choice to relinquish their child into the care of someone else. Instead of regretting their own decision, they blasted the whole institution of adoption.

After doing more digging, I finally found a few websites and was able to find others online with experiences similar to mine. Somehow finding out that I wasn't alone helped a lot. 

I hate that others have had to go through it, but until there is more awareness about maladjusted adoptive parents gaining access to children and being able to talk their way through interviews and make their lives look so perfect so they can obtain children with impunity, this will keep happening.

What Was Wrong With Them?

Abusive Adoptive Parents: Who Were These People?

Neither of them was ever diagnosed with any mental illness or personality disorder.  They were both the kind of people who said that depression or any kind of sadness could be cured by reading the Bible. If I ever looked like I might be "depressed," it was because I wasn't letting the Holy Spirit live through me, or some other stupidity.

She once told me that she would be an awful person without Jesus. She said that she would be so bad that I wouldn't be able to deal with her, if not for Jesus. For the sake of argument, let's say that Jesus did keep her from being any worse. I cannot imagine it, unless her belief in Jesus actually kept her from killing me. But I don't thank her Jesus for that. I lived through so much abuse that if there had been a Jesus, he was obviously ignoring what was happening in our house. 

I also learned that attention was almost always a bad thing, and that "flying under the radar" was sometimes the best way to stay safe, although I could almost never get away to do this.

She tended to use me as her figurative and literal punching bag and apparently had this need to know where I was at all times. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere else in the house and be by myself. It's like she needed me there to take whatever anger she had at the time. She didn't treat anyone else like this. 

She was obsessed with what I wore, what I ate, and what expression I had on my face every second of the day. I was never free from her grip. 

I will elaborate more on all of these issues, but once I finally realized in about 2006 that it's more than likely that they were both narcissists--and she was obviously a malignant narcissist--suddenly so much of my childhood made sense. It didn't make it any easier to deal with, and I'm still struggling with it today, but sometimes knowing what the problem was makes it easier to start the healing process.

Who Were These People?

I use the term "parents" loosely because I don't consider those people to be my parents. My younger brother and I went to live with them and their two biological children when I was three. He was 19 months old. Our adoption wasn't final until I was twelve for some reason, and I've never gotten a straight answer from anyone, including the state foster care/adoption system. 

He and I were foster children for nine years, and we had few, if any, case-worker visits after we were dropped off for the first time. I am a supporter of adoption and foster parenting, but my own experience in the system didn't turn out so well. I suffered physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, and medical neglect as a foster/adopted child.

The "parents" were the "good on paper" kind. Nice house, married, two kids already, big yard, stable income, and avid churchgoers. As if church attendance means anything. What wasn't apparent to anyone outside of the home was new mommy's temper and pathological insecurity. As it turns out, she was crazier than a shithouse rat. New dad was not home much and missed most of the insanity.

I have come to realize that they were likely malignant narcissists. Combine that with the sanctimony of being Southern Baptists in the Deep South, and there was no way I would get out of there without some serious damage.

And I didn't.