What I Want You to Know on my Adoption Day

 Today is my adoption day. I always mark this day because it was a defining moment in my life, arguably more than the day of my birth, which I likely spent mostly alone or with strangers, so there's that. And my birthday, growing up, was never mine necessarily. I always had to share it with my mom, my adoptive mom, my narcissistic adoptive mom with whom I share a fucking birthday.

And people wonder why I hate the idea of fate. The Fates must be sadists, I tell you what.

So my birthday was never about me, but my adoption day was. My parents always took me and a guest of my choosing out for a fancy meal at the place of my choosing (and a fancy meal is still my favorite way to celebrate things) and I usually got one gift (often jewelry). It felt so much more special than my birthday and no speeches were made, no grand hoopla, just a quiet yet special way to mark this day that happened to me and defined my whole life. 

I see a lot of fellow adoptees being criticized for "making being an adoptee" our "whole personality," as if we're just so addicted to the trauma or something. Let me tell you something: being an adoptee does often feel like the biggest part of my personality because it altered my entire life and every aspect of growing up, not to mention literally altered my brain and the way it perceives the world. I know lots of adoptees who would say the same. 

I've talked about this a lot on here, the constant awkwardness and pain and othering that comes from being adopted (and that's just from my experience as a same-race domestic infant adoptee; transracial and international adoptees experience similar pain, but amplified and compounded), so I won't go into detail again right now, but suffice to say, being adopted defined my entire upbringing and as has continued to effect my life, my mental health, and how I navigate the world as an adult. I can never escape being an adoptee. It is a large piece of me that is omnipresent. 

So I mark this day. It's less of a celebration these days than a complicated occasion to remember my story and feel seen and valid. There's grief and love and loss and laughter too. It's all in there. 

 I typically share this photo of my adoption day when I was handed over to my new family:

That's my dad, my adoptive dad, with my cousin Stacey (who is more like a sister), and me of course in the carrier. This is the face my dad has in his wedding photo too, kind of like joyed but also overwhelmed and that feels appropriate tbh. One should look both happy and overwhelmed when embarking on a major life change. 

But recently I found this photo from the same day in an old box of photos I liberated from my mom's house many years ago (it's for the photos' own safety; my mom doesn't take care of things).                    

The look on my mom's face here makes me want to vomit. Those who don't know her won't see it, but this is the cat that got the cream. This is the narcissistic, smug, self-satisfied, finally-got-her-way face I've seen a million times over the course of my life. This is the face of a woman who finally won herself a baby and it makes me so damn angry.  

This should illustrate the difference between my two parents. My dad is certainly not perfect and he's inadvertently hurt me over the years and our relationship has become work recently, but he always meant well. He means well. He didn't know what he was getting into with adoption, but he tried his best.  He's always tried his best with what he's got and, for that, I forgive him any pains he's caused me. 

He's likely forgotten what today is and I'm prepared to not hear from him and, despite that preparedness, I'll feel hurt anyway. That's how it goes. 

Last year, I told my full adoption story, a first for me, and this year I just want to share the things that have been swirling in my brain for some time and what I want my family, my adoptive family to really know:

I want you to know that I wasn't ever the same as you, even though I wanted to be and you wanted me to be. I just wasn't and never will be. Many of you did and do love me wholly and I love you right back and will always appreciate you being in my life. Some of you weren't so free with your love and acceptance and those of you can fuck right off. But I wasn't the same as any of you and I will never be and I just want to be seen for all parts of me and loved for all parts of me, not despite them, not despite the adoption and not because of the adoption, but for me, for all of me. I want you to know that even though most of you never treated me as adopted as different, I still felt it. I was always all too aware of my fragile status among you.

I want you to know that I came to our family through trauma, both because the separation from my first family was mentally and emotionally scarring, but also because my adoptive home was not safe, because my (adoptive) mom both abused me as her child and manipulated me as her adoptee to control and harm. So while I'm happy now to remember the good times we had (and some of you were my shelters from the storm so to speak) and I do celebrate those of you who I value in my life and will continue to do so, my life in our family was rooted in trauma first and for that I get to grieve, because I deserved so much better. 

I want you to know that I love you, but I also ache for my first mother and my sisters, who were stolen from me. I want you to know that I love you, but that love is complicated and hard and sometimes it's hard for me to breathe, hard for me to exist because of this big, traumatic thing that altered me from day one and continued to compound every day thereafter. I want you to know I hurt all the time. I want you to know that, despite all of the above, I will continue to love you, but I do expect your support and empathy as I continue to explore this part of myself and grieve and heal. That's the deal. That's what I want out of family.

My therapist asked me some weeks ago what I picture when I think of family and I was kind of stumped because it's a weird amorphous idea that is complicated for lots of reasons, so I've been doing an activity for myself, making a diagram of circles to list the people who are in my life and how I would mentally picture them in relation to me. I'm not going to share that by any means, so don't ask, but it's been really helpful to visualize that I do have lots of people who love me and I consider different kinds of family and, even though there's a gaping hole where biological family should be, I hope they can be in a circle one day too.

And that's on adoption.

I think Stacey and I should recreate this picture!