Growing Up Abandoned

When I was three years old my mother abandoned me, signed away her parental rights to the state. I became a ward of the court that day and I began my life not as an orphan exactly, but as something much more complicated.




I think now that in the public's eye, orphans are still considered somewhat romantic. Their parents are dead, absent through no fault of their own. It is a tragedy with no one to blame and whether they are adopted or placed in an orphanage or foster care, an orphan is a child worthy of society's pity and compassion.




An abandoned child is something altogether different. Abandoned children are more likely to come from poor families, from parents with histories of mental illness, drug abuse, or alcoholism. An abandoned child has likely experienced neglect or abuse, taboo subjects in most polite society.

My own mother was severely mentally ill and addicted to drugs. I've been told that I was neglected, malnourished, and physically abused before she was committed to a psychiatric facility and chose to relinquish her parental rights over me. There is nothing romantic here. It is an ugly, gritty story that most people simply do not want to hear.




I also believe now that adults consider an abandoned child as being full of potential trouble. If the parents were mentally ill, has that mental illness been passed to the child? If the parents were alcoholics will the child grow to be one as well? If the child has experienced abuse, will he become a predator later? Are they emotionally broken and beyond help? None of these ideas are necessarily true, yet a child with this kind of history is not as desirable as, say, the poor orphan whose parents were killed in a tragic accident.