Fracture Reduction
AKA "Shit gets real."
"Fracture reduction" is the fancy term for resetting a broken bone that's healed the wrong way. Somebody breaks a bone. They should lie up and have someone else take them immediately to the doctor, but that doesn't always happen. Maybe they can't get to the doctor, maybe there's no doctor around, maybe they have to use that broken bone anyway just to get by until they can find a doctor. Whatever.
So when they finally get to the doctor's office, what happens? The doctors get out the bone saw and the knives and takes the broken bone back apart. They "break" it again into at least as many parts as the first time, if not more. They have to do this in order to set it properly. It's the only way they can ever hope to restore the limb to full functioning.
But the pain is out of this world. The patient screams and struggles, fighting to escape from the excruciating suffering. Knowing it's the only way to regain the full use of their body does nothing to spare them from the agony they are going through.
That's sort of what's been going on inside my head the last two months.
Between abandonment and bad parenting my spirit was shattered at such a young age I never knew what it felt like to be whole. But broken or not, I still had to get around. I glued my psyche back together as best as I could with what I had on hand and went about the business of growing up. I didn't know which pieces went where, but I tried. Over time things fused into an ugly but functional mess.
Now I know more about how the pieces are supposed to fit together. The old glue is coming undone, and the pieces are starting to slide around into a better fitting alignment. I'll be a stronger person when it's done.
But right now the pain is out of this world.
It isn't that anyone's been mean to me. I spent a weekend listening to stories from my First Cousin and his wife at their vacation home, and met some other cousins. And a few days past my 48th birthday I got a phone call out of the blue from my mother. We made awkward but functional small talk for a few minutes in spite of my pulling the phone out of the wall and breaking a pen trying to write down her contact information, and promised to get back in touch later. And then I went to bed and was a complete basket case for the next two weeks, because it took 48 fucking years before I heard the sound of my mother's voice.
No, everyone's been perfectly lovely. And that's the problem.
The reason given for closed adoption in the first place is that absolutely dreadful parents who couldn't cope on their own. Both of my parents were married within a year of my birth, and began having children within two years who have all turned out to be fine adults. While none of them are saints, there doesn't appear to be a real ogre in either set.
But if there are no ogres out there that I had to be protected from, then how the bloody hell do you justify what was done to me? What reasons were so compelling that it excused subjecting me to a childhood full of alienation and abuse?
Misogyny and greed. I can't think of anything that doesn't come down to a fancy way of saying misogyny and greed.
Other adoptees warned me that the emotional pain skyrocketed after reunion. When the loss stops being ambiguous, it becomes acute. Then you know for a fact that it didn't have to be like that, it could have been like this. While this wouldn't have been perfect, it would have been a damn sight better than that. I'm grateful for the warning, as I'm not sure I could have survived these past few weeks if such intense grief had caught me unawares.
As it was I was all but incapacitated, to the exasperation of my loving but very put-upon family. At least my body spared me the physiological drama-queen antics of the past fall.
I had a dream while writing this. I dreamed I was walking around with my brain exposed to the open air, to give it a chance to heal from deep lacerations that had been made to it. And then my six year-old son wanted to run around with his brain exposed as well, and ended up nearly cutting through his brain stem. **sigh**
I'm going to take it as a sign that I'm getting better. Maybe the poison is finally working its way out my body, and not a moment too soon.
"Fracture reduction" is the fancy term for resetting a broken bone that's healed the wrong way. Somebody breaks a bone. They should lie up and have someone else take them immediately to the doctor, but that doesn't always happen. Maybe they can't get to the doctor, maybe there's no doctor around, maybe they have to use that broken bone anyway just to get by until they can find a doctor. Whatever.
So when they finally get to the doctor's office, what happens? The doctors get out the bone saw and the knives and takes the broken bone back apart. They "break" it again into at least as many parts as the first time, if not more. They have to do this in order to set it properly. It's the only way they can ever hope to restore the limb to full functioning.
But the pain is out of this world. The patient screams and struggles, fighting to escape from the excruciating suffering. Knowing it's the only way to regain the full use of their body does nothing to spare them from the agony they are going through.
That's sort of what's been going on inside my head the last two months.
Between abandonment and bad parenting my spirit was shattered at such a young age I never knew what it felt like to be whole. But broken or not, I still had to get around. I glued my psyche back together as best as I could with what I had on hand and went about the business of growing up. I didn't know which pieces went where, but I tried. Over time things fused into an ugly but functional mess.
Now I know more about how the pieces are supposed to fit together. The old glue is coming undone, and the pieces are starting to slide around into a better fitting alignment. I'll be a stronger person when it's done.
But right now the pain is out of this world.
It isn't that anyone's been mean to me. I spent a weekend listening to stories from my First Cousin and his wife at their vacation home, and met some other cousins. And a few days past my 48th birthday I got a phone call out of the blue from my mother. We made awkward but functional small talk for a few minutes in spite of my pulling the phone out of the wall and breaking a pen trying to write down her contact information, and promised to get back in touch later. And then I went to bed and was a complete basket case for the next two weeks, because it took 48 fucking years before I heard the sound of my mother's voice.
No, everyone's been perfectly lovely. And that's the problem.
The reason given for closed adoption in the first place is that absolutely dreadful parents who couldn't cope on their own. Both of my parents were married within a year of my birth, and began having children within two years who have all turned out to be fine adults. While none of them are saints, there doesn't appear to be a real ogre in either set.
But if there are no ogres out there that I had to be protected from, then how the bloody hell do you justify what was done to me? What reasons were so compelling that it excused subjecting me to a childhood full of alienation and abuse?
Misogyny and greed. I can't think of anything that doesn't come down to a fancy way of saying misogyny and greed.
Other adoptees warned me that the emotional pain skyrocketed after reunion. When the loss stops being ambiguous, it becomes acute. Then you know for a fact that it didn't have to be like that, it could have been like this. While this wouldn't have been perfect, it would have been a damn sight better than that. I'm grateful for the warning, as I'm not sure I could have survived these past few weeks if such intense grief had caught me unawares.
As it was I was all but incapacitated, to the exasperation of my loving but very put-upon family. At least my body spared me the physiological drama-queen antics of the past fall.
I had a dream while writing this. I dreamed I was walking around with my brain exposed to the open air, to give it a chance to heal from deep lacerations that had been made to it. And then my six year-old son wanted to run around with his brain exposed as well, and ended up nearly cutting through his brain stem. **sigh**
I'm going to take it as a sign that I'm getting better. Maybe the poison is finally working its way out my body, and not a moment too soon.