I am adopted. Being adopted. Is adopted. Was adopted.
Adopted. The word is divorced from what adoption really is, what it means to live adoption. To have it manifest itself every moment, insinuate itself into your very consciousness.
I've been trying to boil it down into terms Normies can understand. And since what we are talking about is so incredibly foreign to anyone raised in the privilege of their own blood, it hasn't been easy finding words other than trite, over-used expressions that have already been rendered meaningless by repetition.
I thought maybe some meaningful, real world applications.
It's part of everything, from the enormity of the concealment and denial of our identities (too big to process for a kept person, I understand), all the way down to something as small as looking across the breakfast table at your "mom", and thinking, "She's not really my mom. I wonder what my real mom eats for breakfast?" Always accompanied by the deep melancholy that comes with not knowing. Or not being with the ones you were born to. Or not belonging. Or all of those rolled together.
I was always introduced as "my adopted daughter", I think, so people could exclaim, "she's adopted? But she looks so much like you!" I used to stare into the mirror for hours, searching my face for similarities. Other than being overweight white women with dark hair and green eyes, I looked nothing like her.
When she wasn't busy telling me I came from "drug addicts" or "dumpsters", she told me my mother was "a famous Hollywood actress who was forced to give you up because of her acting contract" (every adoptees' dream, the rich famous mom who loves and wants you!). I therefore spent my entire childhood (and on into adulthood) searching the faces on television, looking for one that looked like mine, even after I knew it was a lie.
It wasn't just television. It was anywhere outside my "family". Public places, social gatherings, even driving down the highway searching profiles in other cars for familiarity. You see, the only people I could ever be 100% certain I was NOT related to was my "family".
The first time I ever saw anyone who looked like me? I was 20 years old. A young adult. Who had never seen a familiar face outside the mirror.
When I would go on vacation and meet those "summer boys" (we all remember the vacation flings, whether we were the townie or the exotic vacationing stranger), it was always there. Are we related? Did I just kiss my cousin? Or worse, my brother?
And some of us still don't know to this day, in our 40s, who our siblings might be. Adoptees older than I still don't know.
I watched my friends (the Normies, the Kept) grow up to resemble, in both attitude and health, not to mention in looks, their parents and siblings. The older I got, the clearer it became that I was adopted, and the more often my "mother" would use it to disassociate herself from her responsibility for my behavior (to passing strangers, "oh, she's adopted." if I was acting at all inappropriately).
This is only a single example of what "living adoption" entails. I don't have a lot of faith it will, but I hope it clears this aspect up a bit.
Adopted. The word is divorced from what adoption really is, what it means to live adoption. To have it manifest itself every moment, insinuate itself into your very consciousness.
I've been trying to boil it down into terms Normies can understand. And since what we are talking about is so incredibly foreign to anyone raised in the privilege of their own blood, it hasn't been easy finding words other than trite, over-used expressions that have already been rendered meaningless by repetition.
I thought maybe some meaningful, real world applications.
It's part of everything, from the enormity of the concealment and denial of our identities (too big to process for a kept person, I understand), all the way down to something as small as looking across the breakfast table at your "mom", and thinking, "She's not really my mom. I wonder what my real mom eats for breakfast?" Always accompanied by the deep melancholy that comes with not knowing. Or not being with the ones you were born to. Or not belonging. Or all of those rolled together.
I was always introduced as "my adopted daughter", I think, so people could exclaim, "she's adopted? But she looks so much like you!" I used to stare into the mirror for hours, searching my face for similarities. Other than being overweight white women with dark hair and green eyes, I looked nothing like her.
When she wasn't busy telling me I came from "drug addicts" or "dumpsters", she told me my mother was "a famous Hollywood actress who was forced to give you up because of her acting contract" (every adoptees' dream, the rich famous mom who loves and wants you!). I therefore spent my entire childhood (and on into adulthood) searching the faces on television, looking for one that looked like mine, even after I knew it was a lie.
It wasn't just television. It was anywhere outside my "family". Public places, social gatherings, even driving down the highway searching profiles in other cars for familiarity. You see, the only people I could ever be 100% certain I was NOT related to was my "family".
The first time I ever saw anyone who looked like me? I was 20 years old. A young adult. Who had never seen a familiar face outside the mirror.
When I would go on vacation and meet those "summer boys" (we all remember the vacation flings, whether we were the townie or the exotic vacationing stranger), it was always there. Are we related? Did I just kiss my cousin? Or worse, my brother?
And some of us still don't know to this day, in our 40s, who our siblings might be. Adoptees older than I still don't know.
I watched my friends (the Normies, the Kept) grow up to resemble, in both attitude and health, not to mention in looks, their parents and siblings. The older I got, the clearer it became that I was adopted, and the more often my "mother" would use it to disassociate herself from her responsibility for my behavior (to passing strangers, "oh, she's adopted." if I was acting at all inappropriately).
This is only a single example of what "living adoption" entails. I don't have a lot of faith it will, but I hope it clears this aspect up a bit.
Thank you.
ReplyDelete“You see, the only people I could ever be 100% certain I was NOT related to was my "family". “
ReplyDeleteHadn’t brought that one to the surface before. Not a bad definition of irony. I think woke adoptees share a like for irony - but not a love. Even irony we don’t trust.