poetry

I Was Born for Real Love. {poetry}

 

This poem is a confessional that comes from my childhood memory.

The writing of poetry has helped me to move through my trauma as a former foster child, international adoptee, and adoptive daughter of an alcoholic father. My intention with this poem is to express a reconnection to life after trauma and to shine a light on the wisdom that was born from the pain.

***

I couldn’t move.

I was nine years old and trapped in my bed.

For three weeks, I lay there confined by fear and confusion.

The doctor said that it was all in my head.

I heard his words and wanted to scream, but my voice could not press itself through the raw and swollen places in my throat.

My young body ached down into my bones.
My tender spirit had been poisoned by physical weakness.

I felt dead.

Somehow, deep within, this feeling was of comfort to me.

For three weeks, there were no outside demands.

I didn’t have to get up and perform as my mother’s perfect daughter.

I didn’t have to fulfill my assigned morning chore of finding and emptying out my father’s hidden bottles of Jack Daniels.

I didn’t have to step through the school bus door with dirty family secrets stuffed deep down at the bottom of my backpack.

For three weeks, although sick to my core, I was blissfully disconnected from those painful realities.

Isolated in my room, I didn’t have to face my father’s dehumanizing words.
I didn’t have to play the part of my mother’s protector and ever-present lifeline.

If this is death, I thought to myself, then I want to go.

I was nine years old and wishing for death.

The doctor said it was all in my head, yet somehow I knew that he was wrong.

It was all in my heart.
I was a broken-hearted little girl offered new life through international adoption, but the new life seemed all too unfair.

Trauma after trauma after trauma…

At nine years old, my body finally gave in.
It was giving up.
Shutting down.

Please, just take me, God. It’s the only way out.

God wouldn’t grant me that prayer.

Instead, he asked me to rise up from the tomb that was my bed.

I did.

I got up.

I walked out of my bedroom and turned the switch back on to those coping methods that served as my childhood protection.

Perfection. Submission. Suppression.

I was hungry for attachment to adoptive parents who were too lost in their own pain to offer a safe space for this essential need to take root.

I was alone in their wilderness and searching for a connection that they couldn’t provide.

As I write these words, I’ve learned that my childhood coping methods were protectors of something pure, true and sacred within me.

Something I couldn’t see at the time, but God could.

That something is love.

I wasn’t born for perfection, submission, or suppression.

I wasn’t born for isolation.

I wasn’t born for fear and confusion.

I was born for love.

And, if love — real love — is the freedom from those things that tether our spirits down, then, please God, release me into love.

If love — real love — is the freedom from those things that keep us entombed while alive, then, please God, open me into love.

I want to go there.

I want to be there.

I want to move to the rhythm of love.

I want my voice to sing the lyrics of love.

I want to rise to love’s calling.

It’s the only way in.

It’s the only way back.

It’s the only way forward.

It’s the only way…

***

Michelle Madrid-Branch has felt poetic expression pulsing through her veins since childhood. A ward of state in the United Kingdom, she was adopted internationally and removed from all that she knew. Poetry has been the compass navigating her home to a place of reunion within as she’s pioneered her way back to wholeness. Today, she serves as a catalyst for truth within the adoption and foster care conversation. She also coaches adult adoptees as they explore pathways to their own personal liberation. Michelle’s gypsy soul has lived all over the world. She currently resides in California with her multi-cultural & transracial family.

***

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