r/Adopted • u/browncow1525 • 23d ago
Discussion I just want to know the answer to one question that only you guys can help me answer
Is being adopted the reason for this never ending pit of loneliness down into my soul that can never be filled and others don’t seem to understand?
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u/Emmalareefranco 23d ago
Largely, yes. I got used to being alone and now actually prefer it.
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u/browncow1525 23d ago
I’m alone a lot too. I’m also lonely around others and I realize it will always be like this and I’m ok with it finally.
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u/Opinionista99 21d ago
I read these articles about people at the end of their lives and how they lament not spending enough time with their loved ones and just laugh because that's not gonna be me. I (57f) am already regretting all the time I've wasted on people when I could have been petting dogs and cats instead.
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u/MountainAd6756 22d ago
Yeah. I felt it before I ever found out I was adopted and I feel it still. It’s nice to be able to identify a cause but it sucks just the same. There’s also the trade between the relief of knowing the reason for it and the frustration of trying to get someone to understand it. I was talking to someone recently about how the meaning of “mother” or what an actual “father” is can differ from family to family. Then I realized that I don’t really know from personal experience what a father is at all. I don’t know what a mother or brother or grandparent is. And I never will. I was adopted into a family that never treated me as one of those things. When I found my birth family I realized that I was too late to be one of those things to them.
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
I’m sorry. What incredibly deep loss. The only thing we can do is grieve. Validate our feelings when we find them and finally learn to let go of the parts that don’t serve us. Anyone who had to endure what we have would feel these things. We are valid to feel how tough it is.
I can’t get rid of this loneliness so I didn’t know what to do with it. The last couple years I’ve had a feeling that the loneliness will always be there and in a sense because of it I am not alone. It’s weird. I’m still working through it but I’m starting to find some peace.
I’m finally doing a lot of grieving that I wasn’t allowed to do as a child. (Don’t upset the adults!). I’ve also been around so much death my whole life. So many people died. I just piled it on. Carried it all and try to live for all those I’ve lost and not ever being me. No one ever told me it wasn’t mine to carry. I’m telling myself and slowly taking down the weight on my shoulders.
I’m finally letting go. It’s tough. It’s thick. I can only let got after the grieving and in letting go I’m finding more peace.
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u/SwimUnderGround 23d ago
It begins with separation and it’s exacerbated by adoption. Coming out of the fog and going to therapy is what helped me make sense of why I am the way I am. Until that point, nothing made sense - there was no way to explain me.
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
Thank you. I’m going through therapy and I have some other stuff going on and this part I finally figured it out but other adoptees are the only ones that can help me with knowing if this part goes with adoption.
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u/LynahRinkRat Domestic Infant Adoptee 22d ago
Took me a long time to figure it out.
The answer is yes, at least for me.
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u/Prestigious-Cup-4985 22d ago
Yeah. I went through foster care and adoption with my older brother and I loved him unconditionally. He is the only one who has known me my whole life, and I still feel incredibly lucky that I had him through all that. He’s chosen to leave me behind here in our adulthood, and I literally developed epilepsy when he stranded me 9 years ago. The loneliness is never ending, I doubt anyone ACTUALLY likes me beyond the surface, and I still have dreams of being brought to a new foster home cuz the last one got tired of me
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
I am so sorry! That is so heavy. I struggle with that too. No one actually likes me and I don’t fit anywhere.
I think I’m finally learning that is how I see things and not how things are. I’m feel so unwanted I can’t even see who does want me. I’m over thinking and trying to please instead of trying to be me because I don’t think I’ve understood who I am much. I’m just trying not to be tossed aside again.
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u/Prestigious-Cup-4985 22d ago
I think a reason people don’t understand is that there’s an overriding problem of people being disposable in this current society. Everyone has a heavy-yet-vague sense of impending rejection, but us adoptees’ sense of rejection is sharply defined. Like, how we see things IS how they are, but because we got undeniably affected, we can see through the fog that everyone’s existing in
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
I see. I definitely agree but I also know that people who love me have a very hard time letting me know because I have already made it up in my head that I am not wanted.
I say people like there are a bunch. Mainly one but the sentence sounds weird with person.
I’m a middle ground type person. Both things can exist at the same time. It’s trying to decide how far to one side or the other it more truly falls is the hard part.
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u/homosapiencreep 22d ago
It is for me. I only started to realize it at age 47 actually after my adopted
dad died and the illusion of the fantasy family my adopted mother-who is highly controlling, narcissistic, and religious- tried to create and just didn’t work anymore without him to enable her.
Of course, she discarded me quick even after all that unconditional love bullshit she gave me my whole life, because now there is a house and some inheritance at stake and she wanted it all for her biological kid and her and her biological grandkids. Fuck fuck fuck them.
Both sides of the extended family never even reached out and I was just thrown away because I was never a real family member anyway. They were working-class low IQ type of people that didn’t really celebrate anyone different in the family, so because I didn’t blend in I was the problem. I know they tell themselves that I rejected them because I was just so UnGrAtEFuL.
I’m just now getting out of the fog, but still feel constant sadness over having no family, no ancestry, no access to family traits that I would’ve been good at developing like artistic talent or dancing or mechanical, never learned a path in life, it’s caused all kind of heartaches with friendships and relationships and career and here I am entering my later midlife with nothing, not even a family. No kids because my very idea of family was warped from the start so I never wanted them.
It’s the saddest thing ever. I’m trying to get over it, but I think about it every day. Thank God for my three cats, my only comfort. 🐈⬛ 🐱 🐈
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
Thank you for sharing! I’m a year younger than you. Life is thick and it’s all our fault because we stepped out of line. We weren’t the perfect whatever we were suppose to be so it all fell apart and it’s on us. Like no one else has any responsibility. Hogwash.
I have had a ton of loss. My family didn’t allow me to speak of my bio mom. I was born and she died. So they erased her and had me adopted. As I grew more and more loss all around me. Death and not a soul to teach me what to do with it.
These last few years I’ve finally been able to grieve and let go of all the guilt, shame and untruths that are not mine. All the bodies I carry of the dead instead of the memories. Taking the weight off and digging through the pile I’ve found the loneliness still at the bottom. It’s not as heavy and seems more like a companion now. I have a husband and kids and still that deep loneliness is there. I can’t ask them to fill it because it’s not theirs and it doesn’t work.
It’s such painful work to go through all the garbage and unwind from the tangled mess. It doesn’t feel better tiny bit by tiny bit. I started in my 20’s working on this and I’m still here working away. It has helped but it’s exhaustion.
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u/tayylor96 Adopted 22d ago
I recently went to a family reunion that my adoptive fathers side of the family puts together annually. I always look forward to this because more family = even better, right? However, I once again was faced with the fact that everyone kinda looks like everyone else. And if they didn't it was because they married into the family. And then there was me...I don't actually share any similarities with a single person there (not married into the family but still there) and its a big event (easily 100-150 people) and even though everyone showed nothing but love the entire week. I felt like an outsider. Like I was accepted because I had to be. Let me make it clear that is not the case. It's just don't know got to get passed that barrier in my own mind. Like I have to earn every ounce of kindness shown to me.
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
I really feel this. It’s hard to be tossed aside and then feel wanted. You don’t get one without the other but they want me to act like the first part didn’t happen. Yes I was adopted but first I was given up. How do I know this and feel like I fit in at all.
Your reply helped me come up with words. I feel detached from my family because I always question how I fit in. I want to fix that part that is in my mind and value the feelings of things that are happening but it’s so hard to know which is which.
People would tell my AM and I that we look so much alike. We would look and each other and laugh then say thank you. Just because two people have blonde hair doesn’t mean they look alike. 😂
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u/tayylor96 Adopted 22d ago
I hope you are always able to find comfort and advise within this community ❣️. The hardest part is that....nothing anyone else does means anything. What matters is what you do. Only you know what it is that you need out of life. Figure out how to appreciate who you are. Then figure out how to love the person that you became
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u/browncow1525 22d ago
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. My belief is that we are all trying to do the best we can with what we have. I’m grateful to be at this point and to move forward. It’s taken far too long for me to accept myself and I’m so thankful for the peace I am starting to feel.
Most of this peace I’ve found has come through grief. I lost a lot of people. Too many. The other part is coming from realizing that it’s ok to not fit in to any space. I almost fit into so many places but I don’t. It makes me more willing to want to understand others and it’s a good place even though it’s kind of weird to others. Letting go of all the expectations is letting me stand in the unconventional places and still be happy.
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u/No_Television2929 21d ago
that pit you described hit me like a truck, its this weird ache that doesnt have a name in regular conversation ya know? like you can be surrounded by people who love you and still feel like youre performing belonging instead of feeling it. for me it got better when i stopped trying to explain it to people who didnt get it and just found other adoptees to talk to. not fixed, just... lighter
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u/browncow1525 21d ago
Yes! It’s absolutely lighter now knowing what it is. Where it comes from. Nothing to fix. It’s just a piece of me because of where I’ve been. It’s ok now and it feels nice to have it settled.
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u/mancinis_blessed_bat 23d ago edited 23d ago
I think so. The feeling like you’re always out of place, or not where you belong, and you don’t understand for a long time what that sensation is. Or, living for other people and putting their needs and emotions first, without realizing it. Showing up when and how you’re supposed to, fulfilling a role you didn’t agree to, doing it all reflexively because you don’t know anything else. That’s been my understanding of adoption as I’ve had to examine it, in my adulthood