Posted by pancho from pool0043.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.250.43) on Friday, November 29, 2002 at 9:05AM :
I don't think a kid ever gets over being abandoned. Being let go of by your parents, for whatever reason, is likely to remain at the core of your outlook and self-image. Even children with the most abusive parents cry like hell at the idea of being taken away...and if they don't cry outside, they are doubly devastated within. It must be hell when you have to accept abuse as the only sort of attention you're likely to get...and then lose that. Imagine having to depend on a slap as the only contact with another human being that elicits any kind of emotional response in you.
But there is another way of being abandoned that I think is much worse in its effects because it doesn't seem like abandonment. In this case you're living in a home with parents and all of that, but no one is home...no one seems particularly interested in you or has the time. You'll never know you were abandoned in the real sense of the word...that the "love" you got wasn't really the genuine article. When you can't point a finger at the abuse you suffered...you carry it all inside of you...it BECOMES you...because you don't know where the abuse started and you left off...you don't even KNOW you were abused...abandoned in place.
-- pancho
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