Would It Have Been Easier If They Were Gone?

Something that my therapist shared with me recently was how, when an adopted child cries, what they’re really crying for is their biological parent. The adoptive parent can hold them, comfort them, and do everything they can to soothe them. But they’re still crying because they’re searching for the person they actually need. They don’t have the words to say, “Where is my mum?”

And it got her thinking about me, and how painful it would have been for me to have parents there, but not understand why I wasn’t being comforted.

It made her question: which is crueler? Would it have been easier for me if my parents had passed away?

Because then it would be, “They’re not here, and so I don’t have that.”

Instead of, “They are there, but they don’t hold me.”

She goes on to say that it would have been painful for them to pass away, but she believes that I would have made more sense of it.

And it got me thinking: what do you do when you never had love or care given to you at all in the first place? What do you do with yourself?

Because the default assumption is that when someone has parents, there was care in some form. And so there was no acknowledgement of what was happening, because people don’t see it. Which not only made me more lonely, but through the eyes of others, I developed the belief: “Well, if they don’t see it, and they don’t acknowledge it, then it must be me. I’m the problem.”

So would it have been clearer on me, if they had passed away?

Would it have prevented me from feeling like I was the problem?