Not long ago I was showing my photograph album to a couple of friends. “This is me before I was adopted, and this is me after I was adopted,” I said.
They seemed surprised that I had made that distinction and I suddenly realised that in spite of my catastrophic change of circumstances they saw me as one and the same person throughout, whereas I had, without being fully conscious of it, been seeing myself as two people.
I had been rebelling from the age of eight or nine against the unnatural regime being imposed on me by my elders, but the incident with the photos made me think that what I saw as their "pushing me out of shape" had started earlier, with attempts to make me, the square peg, fit into their – my adopters – round hole.
I've always been rather introspective, and I remember my head-mistress commenting on my degree of self-awareness when I was in my early teens and in trouble for some misdemeanor at school. Throughout my life I've made conscious efforts to be honest with myself and open with other people, to have a feeling for other people’s reality as well as my own.
More than 20 years ago I copied out these words from a book by Sheldon Kopp:
If I am transparent enough to myself, then I can become less afraid of those hidden selves that my transparency may reveal to others. If I reveal myself without worrying how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone . . . My free decision to be transparent is a commitment to never-ending struggle.
My conclusion now that I am a "senior citizen" is that, whether I have been loved or not, at least I've made efforts to be true to myself, and not be formed in someone else's mould.
During the last few years I have come to feel that my mother did love me and that for the short time we were together we had a close bond. But as a tiny baby I was imprinted with the knowledge that the most crucial relationship in my life, the sacred bond with the mother who bore me, led only to abandonment and suffering. No one else acknowledged that suffering and no one else could possibly compensate for it. I believe that for much of my life I have been unable to allow myself feel loved again because I "knew" it would only lead to further pain and sorrow.