AND YOU STILL LOVE ME?

This is a question I have not always been able to ask myself or others. Mostly because I was afraid of the answer I might get. 

I had a huge discussion, more like an argument, with my son a few days ago; he is 30 and his opinions differ from mine on some things. The discussion itself is not of much relevance to this blog post but let us just say it was a deeply personal for both of us on opposite sides of the discussion. He is as passionate as am I when I am invested in the topic. 

At the end of this, sometimes loud, 30-minute conversation he said “I’ll talk to you later, I love you Mom”

I was like wait, what?  Did he just say he loved me?  Instead of ending the call, I found the words to say I love you back to him. 

After the call, I had to stop and think, because that is what I am training my brain to do when it’s in conflict with past behaviors and current situations. In the past in a similar situation I would have not said I love you back to him, I would have not texted him or talked to him until he reached out first and I would have sulked about arguing with my son. I know child-like behavior.  All because he disagreed with me, wouldn’t hear my point of view and yelled at me. This is new territory for me to try something new. It hasn’t served me well in my life to shut down and not speak my mind. I want to throw away the old behaviors and try on these new ones, but it’s real struggle sometimes.

I don’t often get in disagreements or state an opposing view, even if I have one because it doesn’t feel right to me to rock the boat. That’s how I see it. I do have an opinion though and I am not just a go-along-with-it-all type of person. I just hate arguing and hate the way it makes my gut gurgle and bowels act up. Yes, to be truthful my bowel is like my weather vane for my body. How I feel about a discussion is directly impacted on my bowels. If you say to me “we need to talk about something”, you can bet that I will be headed to the bathroom first or right after the talk. This is hard to admit, but I think it needs to be said. My head has a direct line to my intestines. Others have different physical sensitivities, this is mine.

Not too many people that can get me riled up like my son can. As much as we are the same, we are different. I believe it is the people the closest to us that we are most afraid to lose.  Which is why I have a hard time going against him or having a different opinion from his, but in this situation I had to. 

The idea that my son would be mad at me and not want to talk to me is devastating. He would likely never think that an argument would make me not want to speak to him or that I could stop loving him. For me, in the same situation it is my first fear. Even if I can’t say it, it’s in my body,  I am reacting to it and I can’t speak it.

Non-adopted people view the world through a different lens.  Adopted people, me, see the world as if everything will collapse in a moment’s notice. This is also hard to admit but it’s my reality. Like the rug can be pulled out in an instance over something that the other person is not even thinking about a few minutes later. For me it’s still lingering days later. 

Yes, it means that I am looking at the world as a glass half-full, that something bad will happen or that someone will bail on me. I am telling you that I am trying to change this narrative in my head, because I don’t like it. 

I grew up hearing this story: “Your adopted and someone loved you so much they gave you away”.  

This was told to me as my truth, over and over, same story, no explanation.  

What I heard in my child brain was this: someone, my mother, bailed on me and every person after her is going to bail as well.

The good news is that I don’t have to believe this anymore, I am not living in my child brain. 

I am not six anymore and I know more truth than ever before.

Thanks as always for reading.