5 years....

5 years. In 5 years one would assume that a person would be accustomed to the world around them. In five years a person should know the expectations and routines. In five years a person should be comfortable. 5 years is nothing! Nothing when your first five years were traumatic, unpredictable, and horrifying. My two older adopted children have been with me for five years and still my daughter, who is now nine, fears there won’t be food, fears that there won’t be shelter, fears bad men, and worst of all fears that she will not be allowed to stay with me, that she will be alone. She has not been able to be fully comfortable. As much as she wants to be here in the present but her past rules her. Don’t get me wrong, she has healed some, but five years of being safe is no competition to the five years of hell she has been through! I made a comment when looking in the fridge that we had no food (meaning that I wanted to make for dinner.) When it came time for dinner, her thanks was: “I am thankful that my mommy found us food and has her grocery list to remember to get more.” She loves looking at the grocery list, if there is nothing on it she writes stuff just so we don’t forget to go to the store. She enjoys knowing that I have money in the bank even though her FASD makes her understanding of the value of money hard. She is always afraid when I leave even though I have countlessly shown her I come back. She becomes aggressive and animalistic when she feels threatened. She desperately wants to be so close to me, but reacts when she feels herself being vulnerable. She lives in a perceived reality that is frustrating for those around her but not near as frustrating as it is for her that we don’t understand her. She challenges my life and parenting daily. I have realized that she may never change to who the world expects her to be but that my job is instead to give her a world that works best for her.