Were you adopted to be your parents’ performer?
I was adopted at birth. The only one of four to be adopted out. And not even the youngest or oldest. I was in the middle with siblings that came after me and got to stay.
Ever since I was born my AM bragged about how I was “such a good baby”. How I rarely cried. How I slept through the night immediately. Which I now know was a trauma response from severing the attachment bond, and a sign of shock in adopted infants. I was apart of the last leg of the cry it out generation of parents too. I turned to ripping my hair out and sucking my thumb to ease my baby brain pain.
I grew up the center of my AM’s world. I was her little performer from the moment my eyes opened. She put me in beauty pageants when I was as little as three. I didn’t get to pick any of my outfits. Everything she chose was what she liked.
If I ever did anything funny I had to perform it for everybody she knew. Every single time we passed anyone we might know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recited “ITS NOT A TUMA” from kindergarten cop. Or how many times she made me tell the joke “how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” “None, it has to WANT to change”. I had no fucking clue what that joke meant, and had no business reciting it for anyone we’d pass. This was my entire childhood. From before I could remember until I started refusing to indulge her performance demands. I think it was when I could tell other people pity chuckled because they knew I didn’t want to or I could tell they didn’t give a fuck about this random child’s jokes or impressions. I started to read rooms a lot better than my AM that’s certain.
Then it was academics and sports. She tried to force me to play every sport “at least once”. I was not into sports. I was never into sports. She tried to push music on me. I was never musically inclined. I was into reading and writing. She praised me for my writing and encouraged me to write stories. She loved my stories. Why don’t I write more stories? The more she would push the less I would engage. I wanted to do the things I liked because I liked them. Not because she liked them. So then she’d notice I wouldn’t be doing the “things I’m so good at”, and “wasting my potential” when in reality I just wanted to be left alone to enjoy my own interests I had yet to discover.
AM and AF always called me lazy growing up. In the early days I was lazy for not performing for her. In the later days I was lazy because my room was always a disaster. I was forgetful meaning I did it on purpose to piss her off. I was academically gifted, yet would procrastinate to no end. I would daydream by escaping into book worlds or my Barbie worlds. I was a big masker and a big struggler with friendships growing up my entire life. Mostly my AM chalked it up to all being lazy.
Guess what? I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. My AM doesn’t believe in ADHD, she most definitely could never believe there is something wrong with her precious perfect baby. To her I’m just lazy. Not the fact my brain is wired differently for many different reasons than just ADHD alone.
It didn’t help that I gained weight immediately. I remember being bigger and taller than every other girl in my elementary classes. Pair that with me having a strictly “boy” name in the early 90’s and you’ve got a recipe for massive insecurities. Top it with my AM constantly policing what and how much I’m eating, and you’ve got an obese child by 13. It was always “you don’t need that!” “You’re going to get fat.”Like sure, but as a child I want it. What I say to my child now when she wants excessive junk food is: “That’s not healthy, and leads to xyz complications later”
YOU DON’T NEED THAT in reference to food still triggers a rage in me to this day. Which in turn made me eat the thing 10x more as “payback”. Maybe that’s why I did though. Nobody likes a fat performer. Maybe if I got too fat she’d be disinterested in showing me off.
Now that I’m grown with a child of my own, I have been replaced. My daughter became her new target. She made her perform just like she did when I was a child. She would triangulate us. “Your mom was so good, why can’t you be good like your mom was?” “She’s nothing like you at this age. You didn’t cry this much. You actually listened.”
She got her grips in that little girl while I struggled with substance abuse. She used my inebriated state and unhappiness uas a way to weasel my daughter out of me. She sold me on the idea that she should raise my child because I’m struggling as a single parent and she’s raised a child before. And at the time it worked. I let her do most of the parenting while I worked and partied and mostly neglected my parental role for age two and three.
I OD’d right before my daughter turned 4, and that opened my eyes. It opened my eyes to the claws she had dug into my baby, and it opened my eyes to just how snaky and sick my AM is herself. I took my life back. Went to therapy. Kicked any all habits- even nicotine and alcohol! I took my daughter back, and I cut ties.
We’re currently LC- almost NC because I cannot bear to let my child go through what I went through with her. She is so emotionally unregulated. She’s got substance abuse issues herself with her prescribed pain meds. PTSD from her own terrible upbringing. Diagnosed BPD that she doesn’t take meds for or go to therapy for. She says she doesn’t need it. Yet here she is, friendless, divorced, and alone. People can’t stand to be around her because she’s miserable.
My daughter is now 8, and we’ve got a pretty good relationship. We live, I work, and she goes to school all within a mile radius. It’s what we’ve always wanted but never had. I don’t make her perform- she’s usually the one begging me to do some off the wall shit to show people. I have an inkling she is also ND just like me as it is genetic. I don’t call her lazy (unless she won’t hand me the remote that’s on her side just fingers out of reach 🤣), and I let her eat whatever she wants in moderation. I haven’t forced her to play sports, but have let her decide what she wants to try. I encourage her artistic side without pushing, and I let her know her life is up to her with gentle guiding. She’s also forgetful and a procrastinator which does get frustrating at times. But I have to remind myself that I am too.
Idk. Thank you for reading this long rant. I mostly just wanted to know: Did your APs make you perform like their little circus monkey?