Age 0/birth - taken from my mother's custody in hospital and placed into foster care for 5 months. at 5 months old, my adoption was finalized and I moved to my new home.
3 years - Adoptive mother (bless her heart & soul) becomes a closet drunk. (Keep in mind, I do not want to give the impression that my adoptive mom was mean or evil, she made a LOT of bad choices in her life and is now deceased due to bad choice number one, booze)
Adoptive brother, 4 years older than me, was considered in the late 70's early 80's as a hyperactive, spirited child. Everyday was a new adventure, broken church window, rocks fired at the back of my head, snakes on the school bus, etc etc. In comparison, I was considered shy. But I smiled a lot, at least at my dad.
Grade 1, I got in trouble for being distracting in class. Sent out to the hallway afte numerous reminders to be quiet while the teacher was talking. I recall clearly seeing this red box on the wall. We didn't have these at home. What got my curiosity was the big word PULL on the front. I could read, but not process what "In Case of Fire" meant. So, I pulled it. All hell broke loose. I recall a grade 3 teacher who had taught my brother, stopping me in the hallway and making sure I knew that she hoped NEVER to have me in her class. The principal came to my class to centre me out as the fire alarm puller, and basically ridiculed me in front of the class. Noone believed the innocence of my mistake. Lucky for me, we moved and I changed schools.
Throughout the rest of my school life, I remained quiet. I still have a lot of my report cards all stating that I wasn't living up to my potential, that the teachers thought I was smart enough, but couldn't understand why I'd choose not to use. That I needed to apply myself.
I changed schools 5 times before highschool, and making friends was very difficult to me. Luckily, I was quite content doing my own thing, but I just couldn't understand why I was not liked, or didn't have friends like everyone else. By this point, both of my adoptive parents were heavy alcoholics. Everyday at home was utter chaos, and my mom tended to refer to me as the "little b*tch". She thought I was argumentative. I remember her saying a million times "Stop contradicting me". In hindsight, I now realise this was due to the fact that I take things quite literally.... for face value. So when she would say "Go play in traffic" (she was very sarcastic) I would honestly question "What kind of mother would want her child to go play in traffic???". She confused me quite a bit with her sarcasm, at the same time, I'm glad for it, because it taught me first hand how to understand it, even if I didn't understand it ....if that makes any sense.
When I was 7, Child and family services were called on my mom, shortly after her and my dad seperated. Apparently it had been reported that rather than buy groceries, she'd buy Rye. In childhood arguments with her, she said on many occassions "if you don't like it here, maybe you should go live in a foster home". Somehow when CFS came when I was 7, I felt it was in my own personal best interest NOT to make my mom look bad. At this age, I was already lying to my dad FOR my mom, to cover her tracks.
Anyway, years go by, mom & dad break up and reunite a million times, and yay, it's highschool time. The first highschool I went to, things went really well. There were lots of familiar faces from grades 7 & 8.... until, my parents decided to up & move once again, rent probably wasn't paid or something along those lines. For the remainder of grade 10, I took 3 (! !!) busses to and three busses home again from school. Grade 11, I decided I needed to go to school closer to home.
Grade 11 - new school, no familiar faces. How did I deal with the transition??? I decided to start dating one of the many guys who was interested in 'the new girl'. This was the year that I really realised how different I was on the inside compared to the avergae person. Everytime the guy I was dating tried to kiss me, or hold my hand etc, I felt really, REALLY strange. I knew it wasn't a sexual identity issue, I certainly was interested in guys, but the thought of him kissing me, or trying to hold my hand just grossed me RIGHT out. Bothered by all of this, I decided to end our 2 week relationship, and within 3 days I was being called a slut, b*tch and many other things, multiple times a day. I couldn't talk to girls because they always seemed to be into things that were of absolutely no interest to me at the time. Cheerleading? Daydreaming about getting married and having kids? Going to the hair salon? all of these things to me seemed like a ridiculous 'show', I just couldn't connect. I was much more drawn to hang out with guys, their worlds made more sense to me. Afterall, if by nature girls mature faster than boys, and I was at least a few years (still am!! !) emotionally immature, this put me and guys my age on the same wavelength. If I said things that didn't make sense, they'd just chalk it up to me being a girl, but since I was pretty, they were willing to keep me around anyway. Eventually, the social situation at school became too much for me to handle, so I just stopped going. I recall talking to my VP one day, and he said "Please Sue, I know you have the potential, don't give up on school" So I stayed for one more week. I made it 2 days that week and on the Friday I was back in his office with him telling me "Maybe you should take a year off." ...I assume he thought that me spending a year in the 'real world' would help. It didn't, and I didn't return, other than to fail grade 10 math at both nightschool and summer school.
When I was 18, I got a phonecall from Child & Family Services. They knew my biological sister was looking to find me and wanted to know if I was interested in meeting her. Before we met I got all of the non-identifying information and medical history of my bio family. Bio-mom was 42 (!) when she gave birth to me. My sister and I were both placed for adoption. She had 4 children before us with a different man to whom she was married. Being he was a police officer, when they divorced, he was granted full custody of the first 4 kids. Mother's medical history??? = heart problems, Epilepsy & Mental Disorders. Pretty vague, ya think?
When I was 20, i started dating a guy I'd known since I was 15. It didn't take long before we became pregnant. I figured since I was diagnosed Insulin Dependent at age 18, that I wanted to see my pregnancy through, as it may be my best shot at having a healthy child, or at least having one while my body was healthy enough to support one. From that point forward everything's been trial and error....with little help in between. I was an at home mom until my son was 3 and a half. In this time I noticed so many 'peculiar' things about my son, but since I had nothing to compare them to, I simply thought boys will be boys. Developmentally I had no clue what to look for, or that I should have even been looking for anything at all. At every well baby check up he was growing strong, blood work always showed he was healthy. If I could only turn back time with the knowledge I now have. Now at 12 years old, its a forever game of catch up for him. He has a psycho/educational assessment 3 years ago. It shows things like defintie ADHD (now treated with Adderall). He's a strongly visual learner. He has issues with audioprocessing. A learning disability in expressive language. He's now failure sensitive to the point of shutting down rather than trying at all. He's about 3 years emotionally and socially immature.
Do I feel failed by society? Sure I do. I wonder why would I be left in the care of people completely unequipped to raise me. I feel the schools failed in identifying my needs. I feel failed in the sense that going out and meeting a friend for coffee takes SO MUCH MORE effort on my part, and people stand in judgement of me when I choose not to bother. It's easy for them, so how could they understand how difficult and trying being social is for me? I feel failed by a medical system thats failing my son. I feel like a failure myself when a school meeting with my son's teachers ends up with 4 people talking at the same time, while me and his ADD-inattentive father stare at each other in disbelief. I feel failed that with a son with so many issues, the staff just assume that Keith and I are neurotypical. At one of our last meetings, 3 people were talking at the same time, while the child youth worker is pushing the IEP forms at me to sign, even tho I already stated I wasn't going to sign anything I didn't understand, in the midst of it all, I covered my ears, turned to the behaviour itinerant teacher and said "If this is ANYTHING close to what my son feels when he's here in class, I KNOW why he acts out!" ....at least that silenced the situation.
04 Mar 2009, 4:25 pm
