Adoptee Triggers

Orphan Eyes

Locked outside and looking in on where I don't belong.
Watching life through orphan's eyes pretending to be strong.
Plastic smiles I've worn so long to cover frozen tears.
Feeling lost and incomplete so many wasted years.
This stranger in a foreign land searching for her roots.
To heal this hole within my heart and fill it with the truth.

I haven't blogged in a month although I've been blogging in my little adoptee head for weeks now so this is going to be a long one.   I've been working a new job with lots of over time, so please forgive all grammar and spelling errors I'm simply too tired to care right now.  I'm moving my residence, along with the company I work for, soon and am in complete coping and organizational survival mode.  Don't for one minute think or believe my adoption issues are not hanging over my head and haunting my every day.  Most of the time I have to go on with the dark cloud of double adoption rejection looming over my head but only felt and seen by me.

Most people don't understand what can be triggers for adoptees.  Because I don't feel I fit into the world walking into a new job setting with others who have known each other and worked together for years like a well oiled machine makes me feel like the proverbial fish out of water.  No one would ever really notice that though, because we exude so much energy working our chameleon like ways, making others feel good about themselves, and or overachieving.  And all too often we end up spent, tapped out emotionally, mentally, and physically, and then angry, depressed, and resentful that we have nothing left to give to ourselves.

And, all the while we are walking around pretending to be ok.  And, I guess we really are as ok as we can be considering the strange circumstances our lives revolve around.  Vastly different than the nonadopted world, I feel as though I live in a Twilight Zone episode most days.  It's all so "unreal", and seriously, that's exactly what it is.  My adopted family relationship was forged, or not forged, by a whacky social experiment gone wrong.  Adoption, which takes a child from one family and placing them into another and expecting instant bonding and love without questioning or recourse of what came before. 

We are constantly trying to blend into an adoptive family you share zero genetics with (or hopefully so adoption connections unknown can be stranger than a lot of fiction), searching for biological roots and trying to construct healthy relationships with natural family members, and performing a balancing act between the two all the while trying to figure out just exactly where we belong, or more importantly...don't.

It's draining, it's exhausting, it's mind numbing and heart wrenching, and most of us do it without any in the "real" world knowing that one small trigger such as change, or pending rejection...imagined or real and feared either way, can set us on a downward spiral.

Writing is one of my coping tools along with support groups and adoption activism.  It's no wonder at all I spend so much time involved in adoption forums, chat, and private emails helping people searching, talking about how it affects us, celebrating triumphs of finds and new family relationships, crying alongside those who have found rejection, tragedy, and are mourning, and revolting against a corrupt, unfair, money based system that has caused all of this to happen to so many innocent people.  Because of the people I have found in adoption support, activism, and reform I can survive.  And, I can help change things for others and prevent anyone else from enduring what I have.

I'll close with one of my favorite quotes from Christopher Reeve.  “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”

I am overwhelmed with joy to know and work with so many heroes in adoption reform.