Living a Story

"All the darkness in the world cannot drown out the light of a single match."

My Family has a Story

I never realized before how important family history is.  My father is adopted and I have never known much about his side of the family.  I didn’t think it was a big deal though until I started learning bits and pieces of his story, of my grandmother’s story, of why she chose to put him and his twin brother up for adoption.  I started hearing bits and pieces of her pain.  Of my father’s pain.  I started understanding her story.  My story.  How I came to be.  It was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.  The puzzle of my story, my parent’s story, my family’s story.  There has been a lot of trauma in my family.  A lot of loss.  A lot of abandonment.  A lot of pain and heartache that has never been talked about.  It has probable never been talked about because it is too painful to talk about.  No one has known how to talk about it.  We have been too afraid to talk about it.  And the pain has been passed down from one generation to the next.  Through the younger generation observing the older generation.  Through the younger generation being raised a certain way by the older generation.  I have come to fear abandonment.  Loss.  I have come to fear the same things my parents fear.

There is a lot that I don’t know about my family.  There is a lot that I have not wanted to know.  A lot that I have not wanted to see.  There is pain.  There is heartache.  There is brokenness.  I don’t think any of us want to see it.  We have been ignoring it for so long.  But I do not want to ignore it any longer.  I want to understand it.  I want to face it.  I want to feel it.  I want to heal.  I have a lot of anger towards my family.  Anger that I have pushed down and that I have turned towards myself.  But I think a lot of this anger comes from not understanding.  I don’t understand my family.  I don’t understand where we came from.  I don’t know the things that have happened that have caused us to be the way that we are.  The things that have happened that have caused us to be afraid of feeling.  Afraid of talking about hard things.  Afraid of being rejected.  I do not understand the things that have happened that have caused us to build walls around our sensitive hearts.  I am ready now to start the process of understanding these things.  I am ready to ask the questions and find the answers, however painful they might be.  I have a story.  My parents have a story.  My family has a story.  It has made us who we are.  This is a story worth knowing.  This is a story worth telling.  It is not something to be ashamed of.  It is not something to hide.  My family matters.  And our story is not one to hide.

Where Do I Belong?

Christmas is tomorrow.  Christmas.  I should be excited.  Christmas is something to look forward to.  But I am not looking forward to it.  I am actually kind of dreading it.  You see, I feel very different than my family.  I am very different.  And it makes it hard for me to be around them.  Because when I am around them I feel like I am very out of place.  I feel like I don’t belong.  I feel misunderstood.

You see, I am an extremely sensitive person.  I pick up on everything that is going on around me.  I feel things very deeply and am very affected by the energy of the people around me.  I get excited and I get upset and I have high highs and low lows.  And I am different than my family.  Does my family care about me?  Yes, they do.  I know that they do.  I know that I will never be left stranded on the streets with nowhere to go.  I know that I will never be in a hospital alone.  I know that if I am in a bind they will be there for me.  I know that they care about me.  But I still feel different from them.  I am still different.

This is something that is really hard for me to accept.  I do not want to be different.  I want to feel like I belong.  Like I fit in with the people whose same blood runs in my veins.  Because who am I if I don’t?  Is it ok that I am different?  Is it ok that I feel deeply and am extremely sensitive?  I used to think that it wasn’t.  I used to think that I needed to shut that part of myself down.  I tried to.  For years I tried to.  But my attempt to shut down some of the most important parts of me brought me very close to the edge of death.  Literally.

It is ok that I am different.  As much as it hurts me and makes me sad and upset, it is ok that I am different than my family.  It does not mean that there is anything wrong with me.  It does not mean that I shouldn’t exist.  It does not mean that I will never belong anywhere.  My family cares about me.  I will not shut down the most important parts of who I am so I feel like I fit in with them.  They may not ever understand me.  I may always feel out of place when I am around them.  But there are other people who understand me.  There are other people I feel like I belong with.  It may not be with the people whose same blood runs in my veins, but there is a place where I belong.