My female adopter

My female adopter was a very strict, stoic, cold, quiet, unhappy, miserable person. 

I remember the first time she told my abro and I that she wished that she had never adopted us.  I was about 6 or 7 my abro was about 8 or 9.  As a little girl I remember thinking, I wonder if my real mom would take me back? Does she even know where I am?  When my little mind couldn't answer those questions, I tried to figure out how to make my female adopter happy, how could I make her love me? I got straight A's in school, perfect attendence, always kept my room clean, helped around the house with chores, everything I could think of to gain her love and approval.

To be honest I really can't remember what we did that would make her so upset with us. She would be yelling at us about whatever, and then she would collapse on the floor, like she was having a heart attack!!  My abro and I would be down on our knees trying to see if she was OK and she would say, just let me die.  We felt so guilty!! Like we had done this to her! Like we had killed her!!

This became a regular practice of hers. She wouldn't ever let us call anyone, or tell our male adopter. We had to keep it a secret. I remember each and every time feeling like we were so horrible, that we were killing her!!  It was all our fault!!  I would work even harder in school, try to cheer her up with happy things, like coloring her a picture or making her an art project. It never worked.

As we got older she would threaten to kill herself and us.  Her favorite threat was in the car. She would say she is just going to run into that tree or light pole and hope that we all died.  Or drive off of a bridge, or close the garage door and let the exhaust put us all to sleep for good.  I was terrified of her.  But yet somehow I felt sorry for her, and like I was a complete failure, that something terrible was wrong with me!!

By the time I was 12, and had confronted my male adopter about his sexual molestation, I also got to the place when the female adopter would throw herself on the floor, I would walk away and say, well...if you're not gonna let us call anyone, just die then.  Or when she would threaten to kill us all in a car accident I would say, OK, just stop the car and let me out first.  I don't know where this strength came from, I just really didn't care what happened to me.

She would also threaten to send us back to the adoption agency.  Yet when we would ask about our natural mother, she would get angry and defensive and say something like, what makes you think she would want you. She already got rid of you once.  I got to the place where I would say, please, let's call the adoption agency and see if they will take me back.

Of course once she saw that her manipulation wasn't working with me (which, sadly, to this day her manipulation still works on my 49 year old abro).  She took a different tack.  She began to demean me. I became a daily drug user, my grades began to slip and I got pregnant at 16.