I remember being a baby now

At my adopted sisters funeral my cousin said, out of the blue, infront of 20 people, "Do you remember when you were a baby and you rocked back and forth for hours and sometimes you would rock and bang your head on the crib?"

At my mom's funeral, a woman known as "my aunt" said, "There's the little monster that cried all the time." I hadn't seen her in twenty years, and that was the first thing she said to me.

My grandmother and I were sitting on a bench before she died. I travelled 70 miles to help her move out of her house. We were taking a break and she said, "One time, when you were a baby, you were crying, and I reached down to pick you up, and your mom said, "Just let him lay there and cry."

Then, I remember my adopted mom saying to me on many occasions that I was "borderline" epileptic because I had several "seizures," which I remember weren't seizures at all. I was crying to the point where I hyperventilated and I would start uncontrollably gasping and gulping.

I remember when I wanted to learn how to walk no one was there to help me. I fell twice, and I broke my nose twice.

I remember now, when I was a baby, how I felt. It's not happiness.

By the time I was 4 years old, I had been put up for adoption and watched my mom go through 2 divorces.

I vaguely remember any of this, but isn't it funny that these women that barely ever saw thought enough about my experiences to say something about it?

You hear stories of people going through stuff like this, who end up with lives of misery and self-destruction. I can definitely see why.

They say that adopted children experience feelings of abandonment, and that's true. At least, in my case it's true. It's still really difficult for me to relate to people.

My life started in a surreality that's hard to explain.