Assembling Self

Monday, July 16, 2012

My 100th Adoptee Blog Post



I've not been writing recently at all I'm starting to feel as if there is nothing I haven't already said a thousand different times in a hundred different ways.  Yet, there is still so much there I feel the need to express.  And, at the same time so few who really get it or can who are not adopted and cut off from their biological roots.

One of the most common pieces of advice I get from nonadopted persons is "I know my biological family and I wish I didn't, I don't want them you can have them."  That's like adoption I don't WANT a second hand me down family I want my original one!  You can't replace families with another one and people and names in exchange for new ones.  It doesn't work!  Well, for many of us.  At this point I'd take the knowledge of where I came from and forgo relationships.  I just want the truth, MY TRUTHS.


It's a fine line walking between an unknown past and navigating your future.  I feel caught between two worlds.  One where I don't belong or fit in and one where I am continually searching faces, names, and the bits and pieces of information I have gathered over the last decades.  I have sisters or brothers out there, two I am aware of, that have no idea I exist.  They are being lied to if even only by omission.  I was cleaning out my filing cabinet last week and came across the copy of the letter my biological mother wrote me thirteen years ago, non-id of course, via the adoption court.  I read it while tears streamed and hid it back where it was.  Out of site out of mind maybe, but never out of heart.

When life is going well it's easy sometimes to "not think about it" as we as adoptees are continually advised, and focus on the good.  But sometimes the pain of all of that loss bubbles up and overwhelms us when we are at our weakest.  That's where I have been at struggling every day to cope through the loss of belonging in two families, multiple health issues causing financial issues, coping with too much chronic pain and fatigue, relationship issues, managing a household, trying to search for work I can do, and raising my son.  Wondering all the while when "This too shall pass".

I hope all of this makes sense because lately life has not made much sense at all.  I don't expect it to be fair. I'm not that naive, but at some point I'd like to be drowning in sorrow and hiding it all behind the face and demeanor of a clown.  I don't want to sound pathetic, or whiny, or weak but my mask is getting unbearably heavy.