Emotional breakdown

When I was told I couldn’t stop my son’s adoption I emotionally broke down and even today I haven’t completely got over it.  To the outside world I was getting on with my life and I ‘wore a mask’  I also started suffering from severe depression but just put it down to postnatal depression.  There was no way I could talk about how I was feeling and certainly not to my mother.  I went through periods of wanting to die and would self-harm as it was the only way I could release the emotional pain I suffered.   I felt ashamed of how I was feeling and believed if I told my family that wouldn’t understand or believe me.

For years I was determined that I would never marry or have any more children as I was so scared that I would be forced to surrender again.  I felt so lonely even though I had friends and I loved my nieces so it was my way of self-preservation.

Eventually, I met my husband in 1993 and after a few months of dating, we got married.  He made me laugh and I could be myself.  The big but was I couldn’t tell him about my son, again I felt too ashamed to tell him and I didn’t need to tell him unless my son found me.  I don’t know how I would have dealt with that but it was taken out of my hands.  One day I went for a long walk after an argument with my husband.  When I got back he confronted me about it as my sister had rung up, didn’t believe I wasn’t in and told my husband about my son.

When we had both calmed down I told my husband the basics and told him there was no point in talking about it unless my son found me.  I should have talked and been willing to talk but I couldn’t risk going to pieces.  It was my way of dealing with it whereas I should have been talking.  It took another 12 years before I started talking and it was the end of my world of pretending all was well in my life.