I saw this picture today in the Gym, it got me thinking about the world of my amazing, adopted children. A place where change signals the arrival of terror and despair. Change = Hell = Destroy or be Destroyed.
The inferno of one of my child's ‘change’ rage blazed with a ferocity that threatened to consume and destroy us over the past few months. My own efforts to extinguish the flames only seemingly poured more fuel onto the inferno.
The downward spiral had started back in March. Promises of hope from a children's social worker turned out to be empty. The social worker had led us down a garden path, leaving us shattered and broken. As summer arrived, we tried to change the narrative and talk about the future. Talks of the future plunged us into a new level of hell.
Despite our robust adoption support, my child resisted help, directing their anger at caring professionals and me. I was at a loss on how to reach them. They seemed to want to remain in this dark place. We all care. We all want the best. But in my child's eye, how dare we care? How dare we talk about a better future? What future? There isn't one. “Life is shit, and I will show you how shit I can be......you, caring people, need to go!!! NOW!”
Then, just at the point where I was starting to lose hope a realisation dawned upon us. My children had been forced to leave everything behind in their lives, with no proper send-off or closure. They had suffered immense loss before living with me—no contact with anything from the past. Not our choice; individuals from the past had refused contact. It became a double rejection. School was out of their depth, they were forced to leave. A harrowing experience, I wonder if they will ever recover from it. All clubs they attended had broken down too. Nothing ever works out.
My child had become trapped in their own story. One of destruction and despair, where the only control they had was to destroy before they were destroyed. The simple positive conversations we had been having about what their future could look like when they left their Education Alternative Provisions post-16 had terrified the life out of them. My child started to think they were being forced to leave years before they were ready. It brought back lots of memories about why they have always had to leave. They needed to control these terrifying memories. Talking about the future was just not a positive concept they could grasp.
For months, I had been consumed by the madness of trying to survive and hold my family together. When for my child, it was a human instinct, understandable but ultimately, to destroy, because in their world history had formed the notion that Change = Hell = Destroy or be Destroyed.