Grieving a Lost Self

Many events that happen in our lives can be explained with a simple idea: psychology. When I first started college I was majoring in psychology and minoring in legal reasoning. In some aspects examining human behavior to predict someone’s intentions and their background has always been a natural instinct for me. The things people will do and say to reveal or cover who they really are have always been a fascination of mine. I am not an expert into the ways a human mind works. I never received my psychology degree. I can only tell you from my own personal experience what my opinions are pertaining to human behavior. I believe that only by truly understanding ourselves can we begin to understand others.

It is a tragedy for any family when they are separated. It is more of a tragedy when a person is unable to grieve this traumatic loss. Reflecting back on the time I spent in the foster care system and time also wasted unsuccessfully trying to reconnect with my biological family to reestablish a bond. I now believe that my family, foster parents, caseworkers and the entire system’s biggest mistake was that I was never given time to properly grieve the loss of my former life and all the people I loved and cared about along the way. I was expected to ignore the pain and emptiness I felt weighing down on me everyday as a foster child. In worse circumstances I was forced to take psychiatric medications that were emotionally numbing to ensure I would not feel at all. That feeling of being unable to feel emotion and express my deep and unresolved feelings of grief only worsened when my biological family came back into my life again as an adult. The number one thing I wish my family would have given me after all those years of waiting in an emotionless state was the opportunity to grieve. I wish they would have let me grieve. Instead I was treated with shallow trips to see the most beautiful and luxurious of places. Places foster children only dream about. I was then given the cold shoulder and told to look at the positive side of life. What is worse then experiencing the sadness of depression? From my experience I can tell you it is feeling nothing at all.

Humans are very adaptable. Humans eventually accept the most harsh and physically challenging of circumstances, but that is only if they are allowed the chance to self reflect and adjust to the new direction of their lives. Some experiences are never repaired and some tragedies people do not ever move past or accept. In my experience that happens when grief is not processed. As a person you should be free to feel and express hurt. It should not be looked down upon when your feeling hurt. You should not be labeled as being a negative or unpleasant person because you are processing grief. I always anticipated the day when my family would tell me it was a tragedy what we all went through. That it was acceptable to feel the grief about everything I was unable to experience with them. All my distance relatives I was unable to bond with growing up without my biological family. I was somehow expected to forget and ignore the life I could have lived and focus on the positive that came out of it all. I felt as though I was back in foster care on psychiatric medications once again. I was distracted with materialistic gifts and parties. I was unable to process the inconsolable grief I needed to express before ever trying to move forward into life knowing true comfort and happiness. I was denied any type of closure grieving a life that could have been and should have been.

Psychology can teach us alot about people and life. My family revealed that. These past years I have felt more peace within myself than I have ever felt my entire life. That is because of something very simple. I now understand more about my biological family than I ever did before. I now understand myself more than ever before. My family will never accept that they were the cause of my grief. The cause of my lost self. They will never try to understand me or even give me closure. They are even unwilling to understand themselves. Connecting with themselves and realizing the damage they have caused another human being is too much for them. Ironically, they understand what they have done and believe somehow it is justified in order to obtain the type of life they have or any life at all. A life lived emotionless is a lonely and disastrous life. How can you grow as a person if you refuse to know who you are? A person is the choices that they make. So they will remain positive and I will feel my grief. I will grow as a person while they just stay stagnant.