I guess on some level I've always been Julie, even when I wasn't called Julie. Before I knew who I was, before I had access to my name and real identity, I was always Julie underneath it all. I was Julie for the first six months of my life, and Julie I remained. But being Julie isn't easy, let me tell you.
The name, the identity, the person I was supposed to be, never fit me. It was like wearing a 1980s Halloween costume; basically a trash bag with a print of Strawberry Shotrcake's dress or a Transformer suit stamped on it, and a horrible, flimsy plastic mask with vacant eyeholes and a thin elastic string that pops you painfully in the ear every time you put it on. Or, my favorite example: as the Countess Bathory was fond of doing to her young female servants, it's very similar to having all your bones broken, being shoved into a box, and being left to heal that way. When she dumps you out, you're cube shaped, you can't move, you can barely talk, and that's exactly what the adopters want from you. "I put you into the cube, now be who you're supposed to be! Ignore the black hole of identity that haunts you! Who YOU are doesn't matter, so SHUT UP AND BE WHO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE!"
Only I was supposed to be Julie, and you didn't care. You made me pretend. Just like you pretended to be my mom with no guilt, qualms, or a single thought for my mother and family. The family I lost. So you could make me pretend. So you could pretend. Because being childless was unpalatable to you.
Well, growing up with you was unpalatable to me. You didn't think or care about that, did you?
Fitting into your cube, playing the good daughter, trying desperately to "fit in" where I didn't belong was unpalatable to me. Trying to be someone I'm not to please you was unpalatable to me. Having a black hole as the answer to "who am I?", living the lies under a false identity, was unpalatable to me. But that didn't matter to the State, the Agency, or the Adopters, now did it?
Not for one moment. Not for one single moment did it matter that my grandfather filed for a custody hearing only a couple of weeks after I was relinquished. The State and the Agency only cared about the nearly $28,000 the Desperate Infertile was willing to pay for me.
Cube as human. Seeing a theme here?
No, being Julie isn't easy. Snapping my bones out of the cube to resemble limbs and walking off the atrophy isn't easy. Trying to be me isn't easy, since I didn't grow up as me and never knew who me was.
Am I who I was raised to be?
Or am I who I was born to be?
Am I Julie? The hermetic curmudgeon who eschews all society?
Or am I the cube? The social butterfly who fluttered from group to group, name to name, the chameleon who became a different person depending on who I was with, who I was supposed to be to "fit in"?
Cubes are versatile, you see. Cubes serve all sorts of functions. Cubes don't protest or complain. Cubes don't say "no"; as you'll recall, they can barely talk. Being a cube is murderously easy. It kills you, and it does it easily.
No, being Julie isn't easy. I have to see what I see. I'm forced to know what I know. I have no choice but to be honest about it and be widely and well hated because of it. But it's still easier than being the cube.
The name, the identity, the person I was supposed to be, never fit me. It was like wearing a 1980s Halloween costume; basically a trash bag with a print of Strawberry Shotrcake's dress or a Transformer suit stamped on it, and a horrible, flimsy plastic mask with vacant eyeholes and a thin elastic string that pops you painfully in the ear every time you put it on. Or, my favorite example: as the Countess Bathory was fond of doing to her young female servants, it's very similar to having all your bones broken, being shoved into a box, and being left to heal that way. When she dumps you out, you're cube shaped, you can't move, you can barely talk, and that's exactly what the adopters want from you. "I put you into the cube, now be who you're supposed to be! Ignore the black hole of identity that haunts you! Who YOU are doesn't matter, so SHUT UP AND BE WHO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE!"
Only I was supposed to be Julie, and you didn't care. You made me pretend. Just like you pretended to be my mom with no guilt, qualms, or a single thought for my mother and family. The family I lost. So you could make me pretend. So you could pretend. Because being childless was unpalatable to you.
Well, growing up with you was unpalatable to me. You didn't think or care about that, did you?
Fitting into your cube, playing the good daughter, trying desperately to "fit in" where I didn't belong was unpalatable to me. Trying to be someone I'm not to please you was unpalatable to me. Having a black hole as the answer to "who am I?", living the lies under a false identity, was unpalatable to me. But that didn't matter to the State, the Agency, or the Adopters, now did it?
Not for one moment. Not for one single moment did it matter that my grandfather filed for a custody hearing only a couple of weeks after I was relinquished. The State and the Agency only cared about the nearly $28,000 the Desperate Infertile was willing to pay for me.
Cube as human. Seeing a theme here?
No, being Julie isn't easy. Snapping my bones out of the cube to resemble limbs and walking off the atrophy isn't easy. Trying to be me isn't easy, since I didn't grow up as me and never knew who me was.
Am I who I was raised to be?
Or am I who I was born to be?
Am I Julie? The hermetic curmudgeon who eschews all society?
Or am I the cube? The social butterfly who fluttered from group to group, name to name, the chameleon who became a different person depending on who I was with, who I was supposed to be to "fit in"?
Cubes are versatile, you see. Cubes serve all sorts of functions. Cubes don't protest or complain. Cubes don't say "no"; as you'll recall, they can barely talk. Being a cube is murderously easy. It kills you, and it does it easily.
No, being Julie isn't easy. I have to see what I see. I'm forced to know what I know. I have no choice but to be honest about it and be widely and well hated because of it. But it's still easier than being the cube.
This, as all of your blogs is real and spot on. It made me think of the definition of cube in mathematical terms. In math, a cube is a number multiplied by itself three times. "The name, the identity, the person I was supposed to be, never fit me." This is the way my brain works and I am a nerd by societies standard. Your writing is a mighty voice that is a needed for both people in the adoption "community" and people that are not but need education in adoption truths. Thank you, J.
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