Let's start at the beginning...

My birth mother was unwed, and as a result I was put up for adoption and was adopted at the age of 3 months by a couple who had already adopted a daughter 3 years earlier, having no children of their own. My adoptive mother was about 40 years old at this time, although she was very secretive about her actual age right to the end of her life. My adoptive father had wanted a son, but my mother wasn’t sure how she would manage a boy so they decided upon a girl instead. When my sister was born, the adoptive parents were allowed to visit the nursery and choose a baby, but 3 years later the rules had changed and you were able to choose the sex but the child was unseen until arrival, and the adoptive mother had six months, during which time she could change her mind.  This must have been a terrible torment for adoptive parents. I was a plain, chubby baby with straight blondish brown hair, and blue eyes. My new sister, on the other hand, had auburn wavy hair, beautiful long eyelashes and a sweet girlish look about her. We were very different children from the very beginning!

I was a Tom baby...that's a tomboy before you're even a child! My appearance was not feminine really and, as I grew, I didn't really care if I was a mess or not! Whereas my sister was always well dressed and neat and tidy. As a baby I could have been mistaken for a boy but my sister would never have that problem! You get the picture!

Hard things

this is harder than I thought it would be.  I find myself re reading these posts and knowing that there's something huge missing.  That something is me...my heart and soul are missing from those posts...it's as if a robot reached down in to my brain and typed out the facts of this ordeal but omitted the emotion ...the most important stuff about it is the depth of emotional destruction that continued, no continues, to haunt my every thought and decision in my life.  I'm 58 years old now and I continue to react to relationships in self destructive ways as if I've never understood the severity of the damage that was done to me.  I can intellectually analyse why and how these things continue to haunt me this way but not the ability to change it.  How do you start again...it's like asking me to learn to breathe in a different way than I've always breathed!  People do heal.  They're called survivors for a reason, but I'm still not a survivor. I'm still a victim.  I still dont have the skills to change what appears to be
A long list of self abuse.  Not physical, although the stress of it all has made it physical too.  Made me even less worthy than I already thought I was. I write as if this all happened to someone else.  Sterile, clinical observations.  I have to start again from the beginning somewhere else. I know I'm talking to nobody out there and it's sad that this feels like the safest place to vent!  I am sad.  I am alone in myself.  I don't know if I can do this anymore.