Assembling Self

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Reflections of an Adoptee

Reflections

I see this person staring back at me and wonder who it is I see?
Are these her eyes?
Is the face the same?
Do I look like him?
What are their names?
Mirrors like pictures tell thousands of tales.
But the stories told me have always failed.
In lending me the slightest clues to endless questions and intangible truths.
For I feel just like a soul alone, in the dark no place called home.
Trying hard to light my way into the hope for another day.
Illuminating where I should go, and guide my steps through this unknown.
To discover trails back to where, I'll find this face that's in the mirror.

The confusing ambiguity in being adopted can take on in life is more than tough to explain to non-adopted persons.  Comprehension of the impact of that is something we long for others to realize in our quest for answers to the truth about our biological, genetics, and family histories.  Something we find ourselves continually explaining and defending over and over and over again.  Or worse hiding and concealing steeped in fear of further judgment, criticism, and ridicule.

Large chunks of who I am are still missing.  I've caught glimpses of them in my children, in my non-id, in the letter my mother sent via the adoption courts.  It's not enough, nor will it ever be.  I keep getting told that "family" is what you make it.  Stated for the most part by those who have never lost or been taken away from all of it.

I am more than frustrated by a life time of searching for my biological connections and thirteen years of petitioning adoption courts.  Few facts, or leads, and not enough detailed information added to secrets, lies, and cover ups in my adoptive situation make it impossible to find.  I'm not looking for fairy tale endings, or to be welcomed anywhere with open loving arms, I simply want to know who I am and to have some closure.  And, I refuse to listen to the naysayers who tell me "it doesn't matter.

"If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life." ~James A. Michener~