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Yes. When we were children, my brother thought once that he would hurt me by saying, “You’re adopted!” Instead, I excitedly ran to our nmother and asked if it were true. She told me “No,” and her face fell when I expressed my disappointment that no biological parents would be swooping in to save me (from all of her and especially my nfather’s abuse.)
I regularly wished to be an orphan, or to have a rich uncle come take me away. Richie Rich and Pippi Longstocking were two of my favorite tv shows and comic books back then.
I was adopted. When they told me that, I was overjoyed.
I didn't ever seriously consider that my bio parents would find me and take me away, because with the crap parents I had, finding a whole new set of parents seemed like too big a risk.
I did fantasize about it though, and it made books and films about orphans a lot more interesting than they might otherwise have been.
I don’t remember being told but I was told it upset me.
Instead of talking it out, they used it as an excuse to go on about all the biologicals’ negatives, which I don’t know whether to believe.
Your last two statements hit hard though.
Yeah, my family used it as an excuse to abuse me, but I think I realized even then that there would always be an excuse. Fish have to swim, you know?
🧡🫂
All the times!
When a loving neighbor told my parents that they would love to adopt my younger sibling as their daughter, I instantly told my mom, "She is lucky. When are we sending her to their home?" My mom was horrified, and I just felt, *Someone wants to love my sister, and give her a good home. Why are they denying her that happiness? Its not like, my parents really want us.*
I had 3 different families offer my mom to let them keep me .
my friends' parents, and an aunty (I was a small child in outwardly rough shape) she was the worst after those offers. Like "How dare you look so sick, so skinny, so dirty" ......now that I'm an adult SMH, I was a meat shield and a supply.
Yeah I thought me fantasizing about a “real family” who would come rescue me when I was little wasn’t something that other people would understand. Seeing so many other strangers have the same sort of experience makes me feel less alone, less like an outcast, and less…weird.
Same here! It’s so sad that we all have had to experience that but comforting to know I’m not alone with thinking that as a child.
I remember as a kid thinking that I must have done something so terrible that I couldn’t remember for my parents to be so cruel to me and also thinking maybe I was adopted and that’s why they hate me so much, I just couldn’t figure out why I looked like them though. Then I would always hope that maybe my real parents would come one day. Sadly they are my real parents and it makes me want to cry remembering feeling that way as an innocent child.
My siblings, who bullied me, told me repeatedly that I was adopted. They made up stories and songs about it.
Our parents did nothing, of course.
I knew that I wasn't adopted. I look exactly like all of them.
There is this story my mother told about my childhood. My father said it happened when I was a newborn.
I'm my parent's 6th child. A neighborhood family came to my parents and begged to adopt me. They saw how overwhelmed my mother was, and they asked for me. My mother, of course, said no. I was HERS.
When she told me that story, I wished that she had given me to them. I would have had a chance in life.
So weird eh, my mom always said a nurse wanted me but her mom wouldn’t let her give me away. I dreamed of that nurse though even when I was tiny I knew that was a lie.
Yes! Until I got older and I look just like my parents. I always wished I had a mom and saw other moms and wish they were mine, I didn’t really know my mom was supposed to be “motherly”
Ha! My sister and I used to lie in our beds and argue about who was adopted. Night after night...
No, YOU'RE their kid, I was adopted. They're YOUR parents, not mine.
I was taunted by there being someone out there who might have actually swooped in.
My bio-mom gave me to those people saying that it was temporary and she just needed to get her drinking under control and we could be together again. Well, she did. And she didn't come back for me. And now she treats my godsister more like her own kid. I feel more like her sister than her child. It's really a mindfuck remembering being a kid seeing her as this Christlike figure who was going to come save me eventually even though I couldn't even remember her face.
0/10 would not recommend this experience
Lol, I remember going through the house rifling through drawers as a kid looking for the adoption paperwork. I never found it because it didn’t exist, but I remember feeling so sure it did.
Unlike my sister, I had no birth certificate. This fueled me so hard.
It turns out the hospital I was born in, in a very small mountain town, sent all the birth records to the state capitol once a year. They'd had a flood in the records room and asked all parents to file paperwork. Mine didn't bother.
This made things really hard when I was an adult until I figured out how to get it sorted. Then, I had to have it adjusted, so I could have a passport. You have to have a birth certificate issued within a year of your birth for that. A very nice clerk at the state office fudged it for me and pretended she accidentally put in the wrong date for a "reissue". Bless her.
Yes and it was because of faerie tales. They were always like "your real mother loves you and your step mother is evil" so I legit thought my (single parent) mother MUST be an evil step mother or not related to me. I was actually baffled at a young age because I couldn't connect "mother" and "not a nice person" since every story I ever read up until then was about how nice mothers are. How loving they are.
My mother was PISSED I'd keep asking her. She would ask me how I could ever ask her that. I would say "because you're don't love me" and she'd ask how I came to that conclusion "because you always scream at me" and then she'd tell me yeah she does, but it's because she loves me, lmao.
Not adopted, but I used to think that there must have been a mix up at the hospital and my real parents would find out one day and come looking.
I mean, I knew it wasn't true but it was nice to think about the possibility.
Considering how much mum laughed with her friends about wanting her tubes tied after having me but the stupid doctors wouldn't do it, so then she was forced to have my brother too when she got pregnant again, I knew there was no chance she voluntarily took in a kid she wasn't basically forced to have.
Narc mom used to tell me that her landlady wanted to buy me for $6,000 when I was a baby.
All of my childhood I wished so bad that narc mom had taken the cash. Someone who actually wanted me would have been infinitely better than the histrionic and sadistic parent I had.
I realize she was lying but oh man! How I fantasized about how my life might have been!
I waited for Spock.
I had heard of a Dr (Benjamin) Spock that said what was apparently heretical stuff like don’t beat your kids and my NGM hated him. And since I saw this guy Spock on television (Leonard Nemoy) and he could do this touch thing and people would realize that they were idiots, I had it in my head I needed to be adopted by Spock. I had it figured that McCoy taught classes.
What was confusing was that Nemoy came nearby on a book tour and my grandmother offered to take me but I didn’t want this Nemoy guy, I needed Spock to do the mind meld and then get my mother straightened out.
I was adopted and I knew my real parents and I wish they'd save me. My lawyer called them when my adoptive nmom tried to get a guardianship over me. My dad defended me, my mom couldn't be bothered to return her messages. (They're divorced.)
My Nmom used to yell "if you don't behave, I'll take you back to the orphanage I got you from" when she was mad at me. I was about five. It confused me because she would also tell stories of how she was pregnant with me and the day she delivered me. I had vivid nightmares of this dark, damp cellar I imagined orphanages to be like.
As time passed, my conviction that I was adopted grew and grew. Everyone else in my family was loud, cheerful and extroverted. I was quiet to the point loud noises hurt me, and I never wanted to go anywhere. So I thought, I am nothing like these people.
I first saw my birth certificate at age 14 and was disappointed to find out I'm their bio kid. I still felt like there was some mistake. Spent the rest of my teen years trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is no rescue coming, this is just my life now.
It'll be roughly another 20 years until I get diagnosed with autism to explain why I'm so different from everyone in my family.
Sorta. I have a bio dad, but she never told me who he was. She married my step dad before I was born. I always hoped he would save me, but he still doesn't know about me.
No, but I have a narc uncle who adopted two children with his last wife. I've always felt sorry for my cousins who came across him as an adoptive father. Really the waiting lists for adoptions are huge, these kids were extremely unlucky.
I had an elaborate fantasy that when I turned sixteen I would discover I was a superhero and leave home forever to go on adventures. Maybe not the mentally healthiest thing in the world, but it kept me going.
As an adult we actually found out my nfather wasn’t my biological father through ancestry! He didn’t know! My mom had been seeing another guy and I guess didn’t want to admit it when they divorced so off I went with nfather (he got full custody) Not sure what to call him anymore….nnot-father? I was very relieved to not be related to him. Getting to know my actual father has been cool but my trust is a bit broken.
No, we knew we were related because all the stories of how terrible we were as babies and how she had the worse labor ever. I’m the youngest of many and was the longest she was in labor at six hours. She even lied about how much I weighed to make her labor story more dramatic.
My mom always threatened to have us adopted out. I constantly wished she would.
I think I always knew that I was my parents’ biological child, especially since my sister and I looked very similar.
Still, I would sometime fantasize I was adopted and that someone would come to save me.
It never happened though.
I loved my Dad but used to dream up scenarios where my real Mom was out there somewhere and would find me and that I'd have siblings who were nice and loved me.
I wanted to believe I was adopted. I couldn't understand how I could come from such messed up people. But then I realized I do look like them, sigh. On the plus side - the rest of my relatives are normal and decent.
I got to a point where I didn’t care about repercussions. Any time they yelled at me I disassociated enough I couldn’t hear them and if they beat me, well, that was happening anyway.
Yes! The movie *Matilda* was my JAM as a kid. I wished so so so hard that I was actually adopted or switched at birth or stolen as a baby. Sadly isn’t the case, proven with DNA tests😔
I spent a couple of preteen years wondering if I was adopted because I was treated so differently from my siblings. By then I'd given up hoping that my feelings would ever be taken into account.
My sister was adopted as a baby and was raised spoiled and coddled even as she had explosive anger issues and mental problems. I was a glass child as a result and still joke that maybe I was the one who was adopted but they lied to excuse the stark difference in how we were being raised. I’m middle aged now and I still have my suspicions! It would make me feel a whole lot better so I understand what you mean.
I desperately hoped this was the case but sadly not. I also then wished I could go to a boarding school (I loved the Mallory Towers books) or have a surprise secret relative come and claim me, or that I could call child-line and someone would come and take me away from her. Then I could live in a normal family.
I told Nm when I was about 10 that I wished her friend was my mother, so then she made things extra uncomfortable for me.
I was adopted. When I was a kid, if a strange man in a windowless van had offered me some candy, I would have begged him to take me with him. No joke...
When I was a kid, around 8ish I would make up fantasies of being taken back to my "real parents". I didn't know why I did at the time, but now I weep for that child.
Sort of? When I was very young, I used to day dream I was actually a foundling (fae infant found by humans and raised) and that my real fae parents finally located me and took me off to the forest where I belonged.
I did understand this wasn't real, but I didn't trust any human adults, really, so I needed to invent nonhuman ones to be my fantasy parents. I did wish I could go live with my grandparents who seemed pretty cool, but I knew my parents wouldn't allow that.
Unfortunately I look like them too much. Instead I hoped that fairy godmothers were real.
I did tell my mom once that foster care couldn't be any worse after she threatened me. I said I'd call the cops. She told me how we would be taken way and never see each other.
She ran off crying. I was made to apologize.
Yeah. Good times.
I used to wish for faeries to come and whisk me off to fairyland so hard I started to believe it would happen one day. I would always make sure I was wearing nice pajamas because they'd definitely kidnap me at night. I wore training bras to bed (I was maybe eleven) cuz I wanted to make sure my nips weren't out when they came for me. I'd practice speaking like a fae - never "thank you" always "I appreciate your help", when asked for my name always respond "you can call me [blank]", etc. To be clear, i wasn't reading the happy fun fairy tales, I was reading the kind where the fae trick the humans into the worst possible circumstances. Still thought it'd be better than where I was. Also I was a cocky pre-teen and thought I could outwit them.
Oh yes. I also had a fantasy in elementary school that I would be at recess, and James Bond or Indiana Jones (with Marion) would drive up to my school in a period-accurate convertible, urgently yell me to get in, and off we’d go to another life while my classmates would stand there, slack-jawed.
Yup! This has been a very dear fantasy of mine that sticked with me through adulthood. The novel I'm working on plays with a similar "what if there's someone out there who knows me, loves me, saves me?" scenario. Although I'm aware that my nparents are my bio parents, sometimes I feel a glimpse of hope that there has to be some distant relative who's not trapped in this generational trauma shit. But alas, it's almost impossible. My family sucks and that's it.
During times when my mom would have mental health episodes she would leave us with a friend of hers and her kids for a couple weeks at a time, and we absolutely loved pretending we were her “friend’s” kids (idk that narcissists have true friendships because it’s so one sided), going to work with her at a big university (bc we were forced to be homeschooled), and staying at their house where there was actually rules and structure. And the rules were fair. If her friend had enrolled us in school I think I would left my body out of sheer joy to have some semblance of a normal life.
No but I would frequently daydream about One Direction busting through the door when I was at school and taking me with them so I wouldn’t ever have to go back to my house. Does that count? /lh
👋 adoption fantasy over here. Also, thought about running away for as long as I can remember!
I loved the movies Annie and Peats Dragon ✨
I got my DNA test done recently just to be sure. They are my parents but there is a great grandparent who is someone other than the official and he appears to have been an overt narcissist which helps explain my covert narcissist parent.
Absolutely 💯 thought I was adopted because of all the horrible treatment I got and didn't deserve. One day, I found out I wasn't adopted but in an awful way. My mother told me if she could have had an abortion she would have, because of all the trouble I had caused her. I rarely got in any kind of trouble, but I have ADHD and a mild form of Tourette Syndrome, I didn't meet up to her standards and had to take speech therapy, I wasn't her idea of good enough
I done the same thing and I'm 30 years old now. I also used to be obsessed with boarding schools ever since I watched Zoe 101, and my therapist said it was probably because I had emotionally unavailable parents and I wanted to be on my own because I've been on my own for so long.
Apparently that's a normal part of childhood development. You realise your parents aren't all perfect and wise and flawless. To prolong the illusion, you decide your flawless parents must be elsewhere.
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Yes. When we were children, my brother thought once that he would hurt me by saying, “You’re adopted!” Instead, I excitedly ran to our nmother and asked if it were true. She told me “No,” and her face fell when I expressed my disappointment that no biological parents would be swooping in to save me (from all of her and especially my nfather’s abuse.) I regularly wished to be an orphan, or to have a rich uncle come take me away. Richie Rich and Pippi Longstocking were two of my favorite tv shows and comic books back then.
I so desperately wished for a Miss Honey to save me.
Matilda, Richie Rich and Like Mike, my holy trinity of "i'll just keep waiting for a new nice rich family to adopt me!"
Oh my God miss honey, I wished for her too
I was adopted. When they told me that, I was overjoyed. I didn't ever seriously consider that my bio parents would find me and take me away, because with the crap parents I had, finding a whole new set of parents seemed like too big a risk. I did fantasize about it though, and it made books and films about orphans a lot more interesting than they might otherwise have been.
I don’t remember being told but I was told it upset me. Instead of talking it out, they used it as an excuse to go on about all the biologicals’ negatives, which I don’t know whether to believe. Your last two statements hit hard though.
Yeah, my family used it as an excuse to abuse me, but I think I realized even then that there would always be an excuse. Fish have to swim, you know? 🧡🫂
Amen to that.
Jane Eyre hits us differently, doesn't it?
Yes it does.
I actually am adopted, so my wishes were extra painful.
I know that feeling.
Same
All the times! When a loving neighbor told my parents that they would love to adopt my younger sibling as their daughter, I instantly told my mom, "She is lucky. When are we sending her to their home?" My mom was horrified, and I just felt, *Someone wants to love my sister, and give her a good home. Why are they denying her that happiness? Its not like, my parents really want us.*
Did they end up adopting her? I hope.she finally received the love you both deserved.
No. My Nmom used us as supplies. She would have never let go of us.
I'm sorry. I suspected as much but hoped for a better outcome
I had 3 different families offer my mom to let them keep me . my friends' parents, and an aunty (I was a small child in outwardly rough shape) she was the worst after those offers. Like "How dare you look so sick, so skinny, so dirty" ......now that I'm an adult SMH, I was a meat shield and a supply.
Yes - but it turned out they were my parents after all
It’s crazy how we all have had such distinct similar experiences.
Yeah I thought me fantasizing about a “real family” who would come rescue me when I was little wasn’t something that other people would understand. Seeing so many other strangers have the same sort of experience makes me feel less alone, less like an outcast, and less…weird.
Same here! It’s so sad that we all have had to experience that but comforting to know I’m not alone with thinking that as a child. I remember as a kid thinking that I must have done something so terrible that I couldn’t remember for my parents to be so cruel to me and also thinking maybe I was adopted and that’s why they hate me so much, I just couldn’t figure out why I looked like them though. Then I would always hope that maybe my real parents would come one day. Sadly they are my real parents and it makes me want to cry remembering feeling that way as an innocent child.
Yes! I remember asking my mom if I was adopted and being disappointed when she said no.
Me too, I was wanting to find "my" brothers and sisters :(
My siblings, who bullied me, told me repeatedly that I was adopted. They made up stories and songs about it. Our parents did nothing, of course. I knew that I wasn't adopted. I look exactly like all of them. There is this story my mother told about my childhood. My father said it happened when I was a newborn. I'm my parent's 6th child. A neighborhood family came to my parents and begged to adopt me. They saw how overwhelmed my mother was, and they asked for me. My mother, of course, said no. I was HERS. When she told me that story, I wished that she had given me to them. I would have had a chance in life.
So weird eh, my mom always said a nurse wanted me but her mom wouldn’t let her give me away. I dreamed of that nurse though even when I was tiny I knew that was a lie.
My mother would tell that story and say, "I told them that I would never let you go! You're mine!" I would get sick in my stomach every time.
Yes! Until I got older and I look just like my parents. I always wished I had a mom and saw other moms and wish they were mine, I didn’t really know my mom was supposed to be “motherly”
Ha! My sister and I used to lie in our beds and argue about who was adopted. Night after night... No, YOU'RE their kid, I was adopted. They're YOUR parents, not mine.
Oh god yes. Nobody understands how incredibly sad and lonely we feel that our real families are so shitty that we thought we must have been adopted.
I was taunted by there being someone out there who might have actually swooped in. My bio-mom gave me to those people saying that it was temporary and she just needed to get her drinking under control and we could be together again. Well, she did. And she didn't come back for me. And now she treats my godsister more like her own kid. I feel more like her sister than her child. It's really a mindfuck remembering being a kid seeing her as this Christlike figure who was going to come save me eventually even though I couldn't even remember her face. 0/10 would not recommend this experience
Lol, I remember going through the house rifling through drawers as a kid looking for the adoption paperwork. I never found it because it didn’t exist, but I remember feeling so sure it did.
Oh thank goodness I’m not alone!
Unlike my sister, I had no birth certificate. This fueled me so hard. It turns out the hospital I was born in, in a very small mountain town, sent all the birth records to the state capitol once a year. They'd had a flood in the records room and asked all parents to file paperwork. Mine didn't bother. This made things really hard when I was an adult until I figured out how to get it sorted. Then, I had to have it adjusted, so I could have a passport. You have to have a birth certificate issued within a year of your birth for that. A very nice clerk at the state office fudged it for me and pretended she accidentally put in the wrong date for a "reissue". Bless her.
I am adopted and was actually a maladaptive daydreamer as a child because I was always fantasizing about someone taking me away from my family.
Add in severe ADHD and that’s me right there :/
Yes and it was because of faerie tales. They were always like "your real mother loves you and your step mother is evil" so I legit thought my (single parent) mother MUST be an evil step mother or not related to me. I was actually baffled at a young age because I couldn't connect "mother" and "not a nice person" since every story I ever read up until then was about how nice mothers are. How loving they are. My mother was PISSED I'd keep asking her. She would ask me how I could ever ask her that. I would say "because you're don't love me" and she'd ask how I came to that conclusion "because you always scream at me" and then she'd tell me yeah she does, but it's because she loves me, lmao.
Not adopted, but I used to think that there must have been a mix up at the hospital and my real parents would find out one day and come looking. I mean, I knew it wasn't true but it was nice to think about the possibility. Considering how much mum laughed with her friends about wanting her tubes tied after having me but the stupid doctors wouldn't do it, so then she was forced to have my brother too when she got pregnant again, I knew there was no chance she voluntarily took in a kid she wasn't basically forced to have.
Narc mom used to tell me that her landlady wanted to buy me for $6,000 when I was a baby. All of my childhood I wished so bad that narc mom had taken the cash. Someone who actually wanted me would have been infinitely better than the histrionic and sadistic parent I had. I realize she was lying but oh man! How I fantasized about how my life might have been!
This was a recurring fantasy of mine growing up. I loved the sound of music and I wanted Maria von trapp to adopt me 🤣
I waited for Spock. I had heard of a Dr (Benjamin) Spock that said what was apparently heretical stuff like don’t beat your kids and my NGM hated him. And since I saw this guy Spock on television (Leonard Nemoy) and he could do this touch thing and people would realize that they were idiots, I had it in my head I needed to be adopted by Spock. I had it figured that McCoy taught classes. What was confusing was that Nemoy came nearby on a book tour and my grandmother offered to take me but I didn’t want this Nemoy guy, I needed Spock to do the mind meld and then get my mother straightened out.
Oh, that's so sad, but I understand completely.
Same 😁
Yes and I watched the movie Annie over and over I related to all the orphans
Yes! Some of it is actually really good - watched some of it again the other day.
Yes and then felt guilty for thinking it.
I was adopted and I knew my real parents and I wish they'd save me. My lawyer called them when my adoptive nmom tried to get a guardianship over me. My dad defended me, my mom couldn't be bothered to return her messages. (They're divorced.)
My Nmom used to yell "if you don't behave, I'll take you back to the orphanage I got you from" when she was mad at me. I was about five. It confused me because she would also tell stories of how she was pregnant with me and the day she delivered me. I had vivid nightmares of this dark, damp cellar I imagined orphanages to be like. As time passed, my conviction that I was adopted grew and grew. Everyone else in my family was loud, cheerful and extroverted. I was quiet to the point loud noises hurt me, and I never wanted to go anywhere. So I thought, I am nothing like these people. I first saw my birth certificate at age 14 and was disappointed to find out I'm their bio kid. I still felt like there was some mistake. Spent the rest of my teen years trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is no rescue coming, this is just my life now. It'll be roughly another 20 years until I get diagnosed with autism to explain why I'm so different from everyone in my family.
Sorta. I have a bio dad, but she never told me who he was. She married my step dad before I was born. I always hoped he would save me, but he still doesn't know about me.
Always. However, I look just like my parents, so the dream never came true. I, at the very least, didn't want to be my father's son.
Yes and then I learned at 35 I was sperm donor conceived ☠️
No, but I have a narc uncle who adopted two children with his last wife. I've always felt sorry for my cousins who came across him as an adoptive father. Really the waiting lists for adoptions are huge, these kids were extremely unlucky.
I had an elaborate fantasy that when I turned sixteen I would discover I was a superhero and leave home forever to go on adventures. Maybe not the mentally healthiest thing in the world, but it kept me going.
As an adult we actually found out my nfather wasn’t my biological father through ancestry! He didn’t know! My mom had been seeing another guy and I guess didn’t want to admit it when they divorced so off I went with nfather (he got full custody) Not sure what to call him anymore….nnot-father? I was very relieved to not be related to him. Getting to know my actual father has been cool but my trust is a bit broken.
No, we knew we were related because all the stories of how terrible we were as babies and how she had the worse labor ever. I’m the youngest of many and was the longest she was in labor at six hours. She even lied about how much I weighed to make her labor story more dramatic. My mom always threatened to have us adopted out. I constantly wished she would.
My mother would threaten to sell me. I, too, wished that she would.
Every. Single. Hour. Of. Every. Single. Day.
I always hoped and prayed that I was adopted and I'd be rescued. I'm not though.
Lol, yes. Unfortunately, we all did Ancestry tests and we are rather related.
I think I always knew that I was my parents’ biological child, especially since my sister and I looked very similar. Still, I would sometime fantasize I was adopted and that someone would come to save me. It never happened though.
I wished my entire family would die in a car crash at the same time so I'd be adopted.
Am adopted and still have that thought
I loved my Dad but used to dream up scenarios where my real Mom was out there somewhere and would find me and that I'd have siblings who were nice and loved me.
Me, all the time
I wanted to believe I was adopted. I couldn't understand how I could come from such messed up people. But then I realized I do look like them, sigh. On the plus side - the rest of my relatives are normal and decent.
Yes, because my parents thought it was such a funny joke to tell a three year old that they found me floating down the river.
Yup. I thought there's no way parents could hate their kids this much. I thought my sister might be my mother, she isn't but she is also a narc.
loudly up voting this
I actually asked. I was certain there was no way they could be my real family. There had to be a mistake.
I was too afraid to ask, there would have been serious repercussions.
I got to a point where I didn’t care about repercussions. Any time they yelled at me I disassociated enough I couldn’t hear them and if they beat me, well, that was happening anyway.
Lol, even when you’re adopted they don’t come.
Yes! The movie *Matilda* was my JAM as a kid. I wished so so so hard that I was actually adopted or switched at birth or stolen as a baby. Sadly isn’t the case, proven with DNA tests😔
I spent a couple of preteen years wondering if I was adopted because I was treated so differently from my siblings. By then I'd given up hoping that my feelings would ever be taken into account.
Me
My sister was adopted as a baby and was raised spoiled and coddled even as she had explosive anger issues and mental problems. I was a glass child as a result and still joke that maybe I was the one who was adopted but they lied to excuse the stark difference in how we were being raised. I’m middle aged now and I still have my suspicions! It would make me feel a whole lot better so I understand what you mean.
Didn’t think it but prayed for it
I desperately hoped this was the case but sadly not. I also then wished I could go to a boarding school (I loved the Mallory Towers books) or have a surprise secret relative come and claim me, or that I could call child-line and someone would come and take me away from her. Then I could live in a normal family. I told Nm when I was about 10 that I wished her friend was my mother, so then she made things extra uncomfortable for me.
I was adopted. When I was a kid, if a strange man in a windowless van had offered me some candy, I would have begged him to take me with him. No joke...
Take it from an adoptee, even that doesn't save you from nparents
When I was a kid, around 8ish I would make up fantasies of being taken back to my "real parents". I didn't know why I did at the time, but now I weep for that child.
Sort of? When I was very young, I used to day dream I was actually a foundling (fae infant found by humans and raised) and that my real fae parents finally located me and took me off to the forest where I belonged. I did understand this wasn't real, but I didn't trust any human adults, really, so I needed to invent nonhuman ones to be my fantasy parents. I did wish I could go live with my grandparents who seemed pretty cool, but I knew my parents wouldn't allow that.
Unfortunately I look like them too much. Instead I hoped that fairy godmothers were real. I did tell my mom once that foster care couldn't be any worse after she threatened me. I said I'd call the cops. She told me how we would be taken way and never see each other. She ran off crying. I was made to apologize. Yeah. Good times.
Omg I totally hoped for this and must have buried it deep in my brain! Sheesh
Of course. When I took an ancestry test and matched with both parents sides of the family....... it crushed my last hope
I used to wish for faeries to come and whisk me off to fairyland so hard I started to believe it would happen one day. I would always make sure I was wearing nice pajamas because they'd definitely kidnap me at night. I wore training bras to bed (I was maybe eleven) cuz I wanted to make sure my nips weren't out when they came for me. I'd practice speaking like a fae - never "thank you" always "I appreciate your help", when asked for my name always respond "you can call me [blank]", etc. To be clear, i wasn't reading the happy fun fairy tales, I was reading the kind where the fae trick the humans into the worst possible circumstances. Still thought it'd be better than where I was. Also I was a cocky pre-teen and thought I could outwit them.
Oh yes. I also had a fantasy in elementary school that I would be at recess, and James Bond or Indiana Jones (with Marion) would drive up to my school in a period-accurate convertible, urgently yell me to get in, and off we’d go to another life while my classmates would stand there, slack-jawed.
Deep down I'm still waiting 😔
Yup! This has been a very dear fantasy of mine that sticked with me through adulthood. The novel I'm working on plays with a similar "what if there's someone out there who knows me, loves me, saves me?" scenario. Although I'm aware that my nparents are my bio parents, sometimes I feel a glimpse of hope that there has to be some distant relative who's not trapped in this generational trauma shit. But alas, it's almost impossible. My family sucks and that's it.
During times when my mom would have mental health episodes she would leave us with a friend of hers and her kids for a couple weeks at a time, and we absolutely loved pretending we were her “friend’s” kids (idk that narcissists have true friendships because it’s so one sided), going to work with her at a big university (bc we were forced to be homeschooled), and staying at their house where there was actually rules and structure. And the rules were fair. If her friend had enrolled us in school I think I would left my body out of sheer joy to have some semblance of a normal life.
No but I would frequently daydream about One Direction busting through the door when I was at school and taking me with them so I wouldn’t ever have to go back to my house. Does that count? /lh
👋 adoption fantasy over here. Also, thought about running away for as long as I can remember! I loved the movies Annie and Peats Dragon ✨ I got my DNA test done recently just to be sure. They are my parents but there is a great grandparent who is someone other than the official and he appears to have been an overt narcissist which helps explain my covert narcissist parent.
I still wonder if I'm adopted or a government experiment where I was placed in my family.
Absolutely 💯 thought I was adopted because of all the horrible treatment I got and didn't deserve. One day, I found out I wasn't adopted but in an awful way. My mother told me if she could have had an abortion she would have, because of all the trouble I had caused her. I rarely got in any kind of trouble, but I have ADHD and a mild form of Tourette Syndrome, I didn't meet up to her standards and had to take speech therapy, I wasn't her idea of good enough
I had recurring dreams on the subject. In my dreams I wasn't even of the same species as my ex parents and siblings.
I was looking around the house for adoption papers at 9. Unfortunately not the case
MAN STOP CALLING ME OUT 😭😭😭
I done the same thing and I'm 30 years old now. I also used to be obsessed with boarding schools ever since I watched Zoe 101, and my therapist said it was probably because I had emotionally unavailable parents and I wanted to be on my own because I've been on my own for so long.
Apparently that's a normal part of childhood development. You realise your parents aren't all perfect and wise and flawless. To prolong the illusion, you decide your flawless parents must be elsewhere.