National Adoption Month: Day 10

If you haven't noticed, I'm jumping around a bit here.  I'm taking on the topics that I can handle, ignoring the ones I can't, and hopping around the month of prompts, all in an attempt to get back into it.  So, bear with.

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“That’s not your baby,” the woman in line behind my mother and father spoke bluntly.  “There’s no way that’s your baby.  I’m looking at you…and I’m looking at him….and there’s just no way.  She’s too beautiful.”  Her comments may have been meant as a compliment.  She may have been struggling to find a new and unique way to tell someone that their baby was adorable.  But since I was, in fact, not “their baby”, those words left deep wounds on the hearts of my parents.  This story was retold to me more than once by other well-meaning relatives, again, trying to boost my confidence or perception of myself - but what it did was make me even more aware of the differences between myself and them.

Perhaps my most distinctive feature is my hair.  It’s big, it’s red and it’s curly.  I live in a family of brunettes and blondes, all with thin straight hair.  Where I might normally have counted myself lucky, I grew up hating my hair.  It was different.  For the longest time, I didn’t understand that I had curly hair.  I did as my mother did - I brushed it out each morning after washing it, and each time I was crushed that it did not fall straight as everyone else’s.  It was poofy and frizzy and all I wanted in the world was for it be silky and smooth.  It seems trivial but it was an obvious difference between myself and my family and one that I did not want.  

When I reunited with my birth mother in 2006, the first thing I noticed about her was that we had the same hair.  Her smell was foreign as she wrapped her arms around me for the first time.  I didn’t recognize her touch.  But when I looked at her, I saw myself for the first time.  For those who are not adopted, this is a privilege that is taken for granted.  To be mirrored in your own family is so desperately important in those dreadful and beautiful formative years.  And instead, adoptees are reminded constantly that they are not the same.  

National Adoption Month : Day 5

I used to think - and truly believe - that I could compartmentalize my life in regards to my adoption.  I believed that I could tuck my status away, take it out when I needed or wanted to talk to others in my circle, to feel validated, to work through some particular aspect of my reunion with my birth mother.  But with each passing year, it becomes more and more clear that there is no escape.  I may not wake up each morning, yawn, stretch, and say “yes, I’m still adopted”, but I have realized that truly, my adoption experience touches every aspect of my life.

Ever since I was young, I felt so strongly that marriage and children were key aspects to my own personal happiness.  It was nothing that was imposed upon me.  I wasn’t raised to believe that those are what would determine my worth.  Still, from the time I understood what a bride was, I wanted to be one.  I wanted to poofy dress and the bouquet.  I wanted to be swept off my feet.  I wanted someone to love and to be loved by.  

Likewise, I always wanted to be a mother.  Painfully aware as a child how difficult it had been for my mother to become pregnant, I knew that “playing pregnant” would upset her.  Games of house were played in secret.  Innocent games that I see my friends’ children playing in the open were hidden, forbidden thing.  I remember vividly on one particular occasion, my friend and I were playing “house” in my room.  I had stuffed some plush bear under my costume dress and walked around waddling and groaning about back pain - until my mother walked into the room.  I hit the floor like a bomb had gone off.  I’ve never moved faster in my life.  I dropped, not wanting her to see, not wanting her to hurt.  But I wanted it - desperately.  I wanted to see my face in someone else - something I had not known until late in my teens when I finally found my birth mother. 

But I have never been in a serious relationship.  The longest I was ever with any one person was just about six months - and it was semi-long distance.  The longest relationship after that, with one who was within reasonable distance, lasted all of a few weeks.  I would lament this - for years.  I was crushed that marriage - and children - seemed to be things that simply were not meant for me in my life.  Now, with a little more wisdom behind me, I’m more than certain that my adoption experience has tainted both of these things.  I cannot be in a relationship for long.  I always want to leave before they can leave me.  I don’t want to get too close.  I don’t want to ever be attached to anything.  It took me years to even get a cat because I didn’t want to love it - I didn’t want to get attached.  Knowing that about myself, how can I even consider children?

How cruel would it be to have a child, only to keep my distance so that I’m not hurt?  How selfish?

Being in reunion for almost ten years, I have only begun to scratch the surface with my birth mother.  It’s been ten years of one step forward, two steps back.  Most recently, just as I thought we had finally come to a place of understanding, where my own expectations of the relationship would no longer taint it or hinder it, I was contacted by a man claiming to be my brother by Her.  I assured him he was mistaken, that we had been in reunion for ten years and certainly she would have mentioned it.  But I was wrong.  In fact, she had two sons after me who she also placed for adoption.  When I confronted her, she stated it simply, as if it were such an easy thing to give birth and hand her babies over.  Those are my genes.  That is who I have come from.  Why on earth would I consider having children when my very being has been written and created by her.  I feel like a monster.  Or that I at the very least have the potential to be a monster.  Monsters should not have children.

At best, I see myself as damaged from my adoption.  A “half” person.  Broken.  How could I ever ask someone to take that on?

NAM2015: Day 2: The Adoptee In the Room

Todays' National Adoption Month prompt hits me hard.  Being the "Adoptee in the room" happens more often than not.  And I'm somewhat ashamed to say that more often than not, I remain silent in the hopes of keeping the peace, not rocking the boat, not hurting feeling, etc - but at what cost?

Recently a friend of mine publicly announced on Facebook that she was upset that while announcing her desires to adopt, she was met with comments along the lines of "you don't know what you're getting into", "they could have problems", "they could disrupt the rest of your family".  This, of course, opened the Facebook-floodgates of well-meaning comments and outright ignorance.  One woman commented: "You could reply by saying, 'yes, and we're prepared'."

It was that remark that put me over the edge.

Prepared in what way?  I think the whole point is that she IS NOT prepared.  So, I went against every rule I've ever set for myself regarding social media discussion, and I replied.  Prepared in what way, indeed.

I spoke up this time, and informed ALL parties that saying you are prepared to silence rude remarks is not the answer.  ACTUALLY being prepared would be better.

On more than one occasion, when I have mustered up the courage to offer insight into my experience as an adoptee and give prospective adoptive parents the chance to be prepared before welcoming a living, breathing open wound into their home, I have been refused with the common response that it's unnecessary.  Some have expressed that they are already parents of biological children - how different could it be?  Others insist that they are called by God to do this and He will give them the wisdom they need.  Nothing sickens me more than that.  God very well may have called you to adopt...but I'm certain He didn't call you to go in willingly blind.

This person who outright refused the offered books, life-experiences, and literature is willingly ruining her child's life.  Sounds a bit extreme, I'm sure.  But 29 years of deep pain and struggle, and hearing that my experience is typical rather than unique has brought me to that very conclusion.  Ignorance is one thing.  I can forgive you not knowing how to help your child.  But to be presented with the truth, and to turn away from it, knowing that your child is to benefit or suffer at your decision, is despicable.

And this is why so often, being the "adoptee in the room" is a burden I'd rather not have.  This is why I choose silence more often than speaking up and out.

National Adoption Month: Day 1

While I am keenly aware of November being National Adoption Month, as it is, in fact, the month that I was adopted, a brilliant blog, The Lost Daughters, has posted daily prompts for those *actually* affected by adoption.  Members of the adoption triad (adoptees, birth parent(s) and adoptive parent(s) ) and specifically adoptees and birth mothers have a much different view of the otherwise fluffy narratives of adoption.  We're in the trenches.  And the trenches are life-long struggles.  It seems only fitting, then, that NAM should be a time to raise awareness to this fact.  Let's hear the real life stories. Let's hear the truth.  The WHOLE truth.  Let's hear what a lifetime of celebrating "Gotchya Day" is like for the adult adoptee.

My birthday was three weeks ago.  I won't be celebrating "Gotchya Day" for another two weeks.  Existing in the gap between my birthday and adoption day is difficult every year.  I wonder what I must have been thinking.  Baby Jade left the comfort of her mother's familiarity and went...where, exactly?  I know that I was in foster care for the month between birth and adoption.  I know that they  struggled to calm me - "she's a crier!" they announced jovially as they passed me into my new family's arms.  But I wonder what on earth that baby thought was going on.  I wonder if she knew.

As an adult, my birthday is difficult to celebrate.  I always hated my birthday, even as a child.  Despite presents and seeing family, I was often a wreck, and threw wild tantrums over nothing at all.  I'm unattached to the day now, and prefer to do nothing rather than celebrate.  Sometimes I think of my birthmother, and wonder if she's thinking of me.  But more often than not, I try to forget.

Then comes the long four week stretch, where life goes on, but I feel dead inside.  Even this morning, I woke up, lay in bed playing on my phone for a while, then rolled over and realized that I haven't been adopted yet.  It's agonizing, and every year I try to forget.  I try to fill my schedule so I don't have to dwell on any one thing for too long.

For me, Adoption isn't a warm, sunshiny commercial with a happy family frolicking at the beach.  Adoption is the worst best thing that ever happened to me.  National Adoption Month should be used to shed some light on that reality - the reality of so many adoptees.

the art of suffering

"If I'm standing beside someone with seventeen stab wounds, my one does not hurt any less."

Suffering is hard.  Especially when you suffer from something that is not widely recognized as being painful.  Suffering in silence is the intricate and elaborate art mastered by the adoptee.

Up until just yesterday, there had been very little communication between myself and my newly discovered half-brother.  But that did not stop me from thinking about him - daily, hourly, etc.  And all the while, I'm suffering.  My adoptive family is absent in their support.  There are only two people I have been able to confide in since my world was turned upside down, and while I love them both for being a willing ear, the looming fear of being "too much to handle" creeps in easily.

"There are people who have it much worse than you."  There are.  And I get it.  But it doesn't diminish my pain by any means.  Knowing that there are those suffering terrible diseases, terrible loses, terrible physical pain, doesn't make me feel better.  It doesn't lessen my suffering.  It doesn't help fill the gaping hole in my spirit.

I feel very much alone in this.  And that's not fishing for pity.  I am alone in many aspects of my life.  I keep to myself.  I keep people out.  And alone seems more and more appealing as those closest to me, those I confide in, seem unable to understand this suffering.

waiting

It's been almost two weeks since the discovery of two siblings came to light.  In those two weeks, emails have been exchanged, but sparingly.  I dance a fine line between accepting this new reality and choosing to ignore the whole of it, the larger implications always weighing on my mind.  I find that when I think of these new comrades, I am burdened with hundreds of questions, though when I have the opportunity to ask, I am left speechless, empty.

I recently (as in this very day) finished reading the memoir of a certain hero of mine.  My Queen.  An Irish icon.  An actress.  A Captain.  A birthmother.  I read the details of her own reunion with her daughter, poured over the words and raw emotion, soaked in every mention of regret and longing for that which she gave away.  And as I read, I wept.

I wept for her loss and discovery, to be sure.  But I wept also for myself.

I wept because while this woman regretted her choice almost instantly, and spent the whole of her life tortured by her choice, longing for the connection to her daughter that she was denied, I wonder if She ever did.  Or rather, because I feel I already know the answer, why she didn't.  Isn't that what every adoptee wants so desperately?  To believe - to know - that the choice that was made on their behalf was a mistake?  To know that giving you up, giving you away was a mistake.

Regardless of the real-life consequence of this choice, this decision; regardless of the inability - whatever the obstacles might have been; regardless of how implausible the reality was or is - I want to feel - to know - that giving me away was a mistake.  Giving me away was a mistake.

Alas, I don't believe She feels this way.  I don't believe She ever did.  I don't know that she thought of me every year, on my birthday, as I thought of her.  I don't think I will ever have the answer, either, despite being in reunion for a decade.  I don't think I will have anything more than the small satisfaction of having known her at all.

And so, my longing continues.

jaded: a brief introduction

After a five year interlude and an incredibly rocky road in reunion, I decided that a fresh start was in order.  Triggered by new discovery, I realized that once upon a time, this was a wonderful venue for finding my place in the wide world of adoption - and for finding an incredible group of supporters-turned-friends.  While I have chosen to remove the blog that chronicled the very beginning of my adoption journey from the "public" and start anew, it remains saved on paper, and will serve, I'm sure, as a reminder of how it all began.

Recently, after ten years of reunion with my birthmother, I received an email from someone claiming to be my half-brother.  A half-brother, which my birthmother neglected to tell me about for ten years.  He found me on his search for Her.  And he found another brother.  So, in one foggy, fucked up Wednesday morning, I went from being an only child to the oldest of three - and all with no help from Her.

I've spent hours upon hours upon hours explaining away every word - every lie - she'd ever spoken to me.  I've defended her, I've persecuted her, I've been furious and I've been heartbroken.  Trying to wrap my mind around a ten year lie - when the truth was is so crucial to joining the two separate lives I live in adoption - has left me with nothing but numbness.  Everything she has ever said to me is brought into question.  What stock can I put in any of the information she has shared with me up until this point?  I've spent days replaying exchanged words, wondering if every word was a piece of a carefully spun web, meant to keep the truth away.

So, almost a week later, I'm emailing a newly discovered sibling with the same ferocious, greedy need for connection that I once felt for Her.  And a week later, I've said nothing to Her.  I thought I knew what complexity was.  My understanding was lacking until now.

I feel betrayed.  A betrayal that eclipses even the most primal fears and hurts of being let go of twenty eight years ago.  I don't know how to overcome such a heavy lie.  My greatest fear is that I can't.