The words “My kids would never do that” will sadly not ever be said by me. I can’t think of a situation that I would jump to the defense of them as most mothers do. When the neighbor boy screams or cries I immediately look to my young as the culprits. I am on edge whenever they walk out the door and watch to see if they are acting as they should. I know my kids struggle with truth and that is the reason I struggle with trust.
“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair”
In my world the kids placed with you have a lifetime of baggage already tied around their necks. They come to you masters of manipulation and lies. They learn early on that they have to watch out for themselves and not to allow what others feel or think get in the way of self-preservation. Here in the twilight zone of trauma nine months of feeling your baby grow and move never happens, there is no teaching of trust from the first breath, we don’t get to hear the first cry of life and they don’t get to hear you speak love over them while growing. Here in our neck of the woods a child has learned to distrust you from the beginning, the first words we hear are most often a lie. Even when they run into your arms and call you mommy the day they meet you, they are doing so out of fear of what is to come and not out of truly believing that you are their mom forever.
This is taught in the classes you take. It is talked about in the groups that you join. You can read about it in every book you’ll buy. This however can never be understood fully until you are living in it. All the preparations made are helpful, but none take away the sting of not being able to trust the child you desperately want to love and help heal. Telling yourself that you understand the reasons behind the lies is easy because you really do understand why. Holding onto trust during those lies is impossible. One reason being that most of the time the lie is brought to you out of the blue, for no reason at all, completely random. One minute you are laughing with them and talking about happy things and then BAM! Johnny killed his sister right in front of them. You know it is a lie, they stick to it being the truth, they won’t budge on it, and even when Johnny and his sister come to the door to ask if they can play they look at you and say, “oh, it must have been a dream.” then turn and run out the door leaving you hearing the music to the Twilight Zone playing in your head.
But why?
Why is there a need to slam you in the forehead with a lie when everything is going smooth? Is it the need to bring the world back into their comfort of chaos? Are they testing you to see if you can see if they are in lie mode? Or is it to see if they can fool you this time? Why are they ok to put their sibling on the chopping block when there is no reason to? How can they see the one that went through the trauma with them in fear of trouble because of a completely made up story? Oh, these questions roll around in your mind never stopping and rarely being answered. It’s like living a nightmare of rutting around in the dirt and leaves looking for truffles and knowing you’ll never find them because you don’t have the snout to sniff them out with. You would be rich if you could sniff out the truffles, like I would be at peace if I could hear the truth.
The worst is when the lie is believable and sickening. The ones that send you into protective parent mode. The lies that have you asking yourself where you were when this happened. The ones that cause the voices in your head to scream your failure to protect. In these moments one can read the others mind and can pick up where they left off, you can separate them and they still can give word for word account of the lie the other has started. It is too believable to be a lie, yet the lack of trust has you praying it is and holding onto the seed of disbelief. The ones that cause you to have to bring outsiders into your chaos. They cause you to shatter the peace of those outsiders worlds and open their eyes to the twisted mess you have going on inside your cookie cutter house. You play out the scene in your mind, you know how it will go and you pray that you won’t crumble in front of them. “Please God, let my knees hold out until I get behind closed doors.” The reaction comes, it is as you thought it would be, and your knees begin to shake. These lies hurt the most because you see the passion and trust coming from that outsider and you know that even if it could be the truth, it will not be trusted. There have been too many times that small ridiculously random lies have been told for this one to be believed. You hear the words “my kids would never!” or “my kids don’t even know that stuff” and you prep yourself for the next hurtful words, “your kids have been through…..” and the ugly truth sets in. Your kids have been through , fill in the blank and they have seen it, felt it, or been dealt it. In those moments of reality you are hit with the truth that the label that is ‘trauma kid’ follows no matter what is known or not known. The outsiders see your kids as adopted thus damaged, broken, dangerous, unclean. They don’t mean to but it is there. In that moment you buckle because there is no ground to stand on because you are unable to say that you know they aren’t lying. In this moment of he said she said your she has already lost against the he because even you believe the he over the she. And the crazy-go-round continues. There is nothing left in that moment but to apologize for what you brought into their lives and hurry home before the panic attack that is rising to the surface brings you to your knees.
A restless night of nightmares brings morning and here I sit preparing myself for another importance of honestly lecture. I can already see their blank stares, mouths agap, and wheels spinning. I will say the same thing I have already said too many times in the past four years and will say too many times in the next four years. I will tell of how untruths break trust and when trust is broken it is near impossible to rebuild. I will paint a picture of the day when one of them will be hurt by another and I will be unable to say with certainty that it is truth. A day may come that another may accuse them of a hurt and I will be unable to say there is no way my child would do such a thing. There may come a day that they are telling the truth and I will not be able to trust them. Maybe that day has already came and my heart breaks that I am unable to look an outsider in the eye and say with passion “I know my kids, if they said it happened then it happened” and so I write………………….
The pictures all show happy little smiles. There are always words of encouragement that she so polite and sweet or how nervous she looks all the time. I get complimented on how much she has grown and how good of a job I have done. I know that all this is true, she is a sweet girl. She knows how to be polite and most of the time she means it. However; there are most nights that she tries to see if she can hurt me or make me look bad in the eyes of my husband. I can deal with it most of the time. Roll my eyes and smirk “Oh, ok. Yes that sounds just like me.”
soshewritesweb 