Have you ever felt a fear that physically cripples you? A fear that makes it feel like the air was being stolen from your lungs, suffocating you? The feeling of being abandoned is enough to bring any child to her limits. Sadly, I had to experience the cold harsh feeling of abandonment in my life.

Every child fears their first day of pre-school. Up until this point, you have been attached to your mother’s hip. In my case, every morning my mother and I would climb into her beige Jeep and go run errands for the day. It was a time that I will cherish throughout my life because it was time that I got to spend with just my mother. On the first day of pre-school I knew this would all change.

We climbed into the beige Jeep and headed toward Kindercare, the place where I would attend my one year of preschool. All I can remember is looking up at a blank sky no clouds, no birds, no planes, just emptiness; a feeling that mirrored the emotion I held in my mind and heart. We rode to the school in silence and I knew I would give anything to go back to the day before this, to be off on a day of errands with my mom. Sadly, we cannot stay that young forever.

When we arrived at the school I held my mother’s hand with a death-grip. I remember hearing the buzz of children in a room, but the excitement was stifled by the fear that was consuming me. It was a fear of being abandoned, a fear of not waking up every day to spend it at my mother’s side gallanting the state of Rhode Island running menial errands. We entered the room and a woman named Miss Rosa distracted me and before I knew it my hand was empty, and my Mother was gone.

I could not breathe. The air was being stolen from my lungs and my fears had consumed me. All I heard was a simple goodbye from my Mother with a kiss and she was gone. I panicked, and ran to the window to see the beige Jeep off to travel the state running the errands that I would do anything to take part in while snug in my tightly strapped car seat. Strange older women were trying to calm me down but they had no idea what emotions were running through my body.

My mind was filled with unpleasant events of my past! I was only two months old, the age where you trust others the most because you cannot fend for yourself. At the age of infancy without your mother’s love and caring you would die a cold lonely bitter death. I was alone, left on the doorstep of a Russian hospital by a woman, my biological mother but a person I would never call my mom. I was abandoned.
For two years I lived in a Russian orphanage sharing with other abandoned children. I shared clothes, toys, and the thing that hurt the most, caretakers. I had no one to love or trust, just people who took care of me because it was their profession, not because of the love they held for me in their hearts. I was in purgatory until I was rescued at two years old by my mother and father. The two people that have given me everything, my own clothes, a life, and most of all their unconditional love and devotion.

On that day at the preschool I became two months old again. Though I cannot remember the day I was abandoned I can only imagine that it brought the same infantile fears that dominated my being on that first day of preschool. All I can remember is crying because I thought that I knew that the one thing that I had in my life, the love of two parents that I could trust was being ripped away from me. That experience obviously was a bold over dramatization caused by fear and I realize that now, but it was also an experience that defined my life and my personality.

This experience opened my eyes to the fact that throughout my young life I had always struggled with adjusting to new environments and people. I will always have to live with the fear of losing the people that are closest to me. It has happened once, what would stop it from happening again? It also taught me something positive. It taught me that I do have a mother and father that wouldn’t have left me on the steps of a hospital at two months old.

I have parents that will give anything to provide me with the best life imaginable. I have been blessed with loving safe, supportive environment and have the best of food, shelter, clothing along with private education and lessons-swimming, skating, gymnastics. To me, my parents unconditional love is what puts the air back into my lungs when I feel the fear that crippled me that day at preschool. That is what has helped me develop trust with the two people I love more than anything on this Earth. To my mother I will always be her sweet little girl that would climb into that beige Jeep and run errands with her all day, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.