I’m just wondering like… suppose if my parents weren’t my real parents, and were actually my kidnappers, how young would that have to have happened?
I have very vague memories of like going to Hong Kong as a kid… and like… suppose I got kidnapped there, would I even have remembered?
How old do you actually remember the faces of your real parents? Can a set of imposter parents manage to trick you? Like somehow brainwash you to forget the kidnapping ever happened? And that you were always their child?
I read about like kidnapping stories where the kid just grow up normally in their adoptive family and apparantly never remember they got kidnapped? What?
(Just curious, definitely not paranoia… xD)
Vaguely related anecdote: I have no memory of this of course but my mum had to have urgent brain surgery and was hospitalised (for half a year, I think?) very shortly after I was born. She barely got to breast-feed me for 3 months before she had to leave me with my grandmother (my dad wouldn’t be able to care for a kid on his own lol). When she returned, I was incredibly clingy and wouldn’t let go of her, they tell me, so I was already able to remember her. It’s apparently possible that some of my issues today (depression, anxiety, all that fun stuff) are in part caused by that very early traumatic separation (nothing anyone can prove). Which leads me to think that in your scenario you’d at least be more likely to have some psychiatric damage, no matter your age.
Attachment theory is well researched and developed. And if I understand it correctly, not having your mom around after 3 months is likely to be a significant trauma which could absolutely account for current “issues”
Source: am discovering some very early trauma of my own and working through all that means for me
Hang in there, friend!
Related:
I remember having a fight with my older brother and I kinda ran away from home, pretty sure this was after the Hong Kong trip, this memory was more vivid and… I was about 5-7 I’m pretty sure I returned home later that night, possibly explains why I get weirdly emotionally attached to parents, older brother = danger, parents = the next safest thing that I know, the outside world has just been so cruel to me, I sort of overlooked my parents emotionally abusive behaviors… there’s nothing I could do.
Like a bird who’s wings are damaged, never allowed time to heal before getting injured again, can’t fly anywhere, forever trapped.