Another rant

Well it's been a long time since I last posted. That is partly because I haven't really had much to say. Well I do now....and holy hell do I ever.

I have to take this adoption thing in bits and pieces. I deal with it for a little while. Then I have to put it on the backburner for a little bit. Then I can re-examine it. Lately it's been back on the frontburner and today it just exploded. I'm sitting here with nothing better to do than to blog and to ruminate about what I just heard.

Here's the thing. A good friend called me up and told me to listen to an upcoming segment on a local radio station. It was called "Ask a Birthmother". Since I don't live in the area anymore, I pulled up the website and streamed it as I sat here.

So they brought on two birthmothers who had placed their children for adoption at various points. I thought I would listen to see if adoptees were properly represented as well. They weren't. The adoptee representation was one of the show's hosts who doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about his birth family. He didn't find out he was adopted until he was 13. His parents literally told him the "baby store" story and meant it. The only reason he found out that they were serious was because he found the paperwork. Somehow he's magically OK with all of this and "he has his family" i.e. the same family that lied to him for 13 years. But that's a whole other story.

So here's where I have to try to be just a little bit diplomatic. I get it. Not all adoptees have problems with their adoptions like I and so many others have. I also understand the whole "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" thing. But I stand by what I think and feel. When adoptees who have no problems with their adoption (God bless them) are given the microphone, it tends to minimize those of us who do. Why? Because people who aren't involved with the subject and therefore don't engage in any nuanced thinking about it, have the take home message that the adoption purveyors have been hoisting on the general public for decades.....that adoption is a neat and tidy solution and everyone is happy with the outcome. Bleeccchhh!!!!!!

The entire segment was just wrong on so many levels. God bless them....they tried. But they really really missed the boat. The first was the host that was adopted. It was almost to the point of seeming like a token effort. The choice of birth mothers was a feel good choice. The birth mothers that they had on the show talked about their lack of regret. Yes they did talk a little bit about depression and one even mentioned being suicidal. But then she quickly qualified that by saying that it was something that she had struggled with before she was pregnant.....not because she had JUST GIVEN UP HER CHILD.

But none of this compares to the two things that irked me the most. The first was that there was a call-in from a birth mother who was struggling with whether she should go to the baby blessing. She was so emotional and I could feel her raw edges in my soul. She was struggling because she didn't want her emotions to ruin the occasion. That's fair but at the same time it's not. In a way it's perpetuating the same things that have been the problem all along. This woman has every right to every emotion that she has. She gave up her baby. If she shows up to the baby blessing and can't hold her feelings back she is judged because her emotions are socially unacceptable. If she doesn't show up, she is judged for being selfish and not putting her baby's "well being" ahead of her own by joining in the "celebration" of her baby going to a different family.

Seriously why is it that adoption is supposed to solve so many problems but so many more are created? The birth mother who "gave up", "placed", whatever the damn PC lingo is.....who is lactating for a baby that's not there anymore, who still wakes up in the night when she can feel her "placed" baby crying. Some live their lives so racked with guilt that they never move on from it and never have any more children. Or the child, who, whether they acknowledge it or not, will always have a hole in their heart for blood relations that were taken away without their input. Then, when and if they get the opportunity to reunite, something that should come so naturally usually doesn't. Blood relations that never got the chance to grow and develop and must be so awkwardly worked through after years of change and evolution of all involved. Not to mention trying to fit in with people that weren't always designed to fit together. Now I realize that even blood relations can feel out of place amongst each other. I can't claim special circumstances from that. I'm learning so much from the adoptive parent perspective too. Some have even said that if they knew now how difficult it would be to merge with another person's child, especially if that child was older and severely traumatized, they probably would have reconsidered and definitely had different priorities.

Expectations are surely dashed all around. It's not the pretty picture it's purported to be. When will people, not just those affect by it, get real about adoption? I don't see it ever going away which is sad because I tend to think that it hurts more people than it helps. But that is just my perspective.

P.S. I sent a text message to radio show asking why there was no adoptee representation. The hosts feebly answered that the one host was an adoptee and the other was an adoptive father. Yeah! And how awesome did your segment turn out to be? MY POINT EXACTLY!

Smoke and Mirrors

As one who has never lived in Southern California I can only speak from casual observation. I don't know how it is really. I can only say what I see. That being said, the closest metaphor I can come up with for the past four days in SoCal is "smoke and mirrors". A study in stark contrasts, perhaps?

Here's the thing that started it all. 6 years ago was the last time I was there. I was on a work assignment similar to ones I had done in the past where one of my best friends was always there. Not so this time. He had just been diagnosed with a very serious illness so he was in the hospital and I was working without him. I had also just barely started learning about adoption issues a few months before that. So not only was I up in arms about my friend, I was very fragile emotionally as I began that journey into dealing with all the adoption issues. Not a good combination really. I don't remember much about that trip besides overwhelming sadness.

As I headed back there last week I wondered how it would be now that things in my life are so much different yet somehow the same. I still struggle with the same issues as I did then but to a somewhat lesser degree. I've definitely become older and wiser as the story goes. How did it turn out? My head is still spinning from it all.

First of all, my hotel roommate was a fellow adoptee. How serendipitous! I had to marvel at her strength and things she has overcome. She's only 18. I still had my head stuck up my hindquarters when I was 18. I had no clue why I was so sad all the time. So I have to give her props for that. I was grateful for the opportunity to meet and talk with a fellow adoptee/kindred spirit. We had a couple of good talks but she also wanted to be with her friends. So I don't know how much of a friendship we will have but I guess I'll just have to see how the universe works this one out.

I also struggled, once again, with being there without my friend. He's from there. I heard so many stories about SoCal from him. Very gritty and crazy stories because he came from several bad neighborhoods. So that's partly what I base my theories and observations on.

What are my theories? I see sharp juxtapositions. Gorgeous scenery blanketed with heavy smog. I see areas of heavy poverty and crime yet I marveled at the beauty of some of the graffiti. We saw all this as we drove to and from posh museums on the hills that contain some of the most celebrated art pieces on the planet. Being surrounded by gazillions of people yet being able to sit on a beach surrounded by said people and being able to have a few minutes of pure peace and oneness with the sounds and sights of the sea. The ultimate was having some time to wander on my own in a shopping center near our hotel in Anaheim. There was a karaoke talent contest with impressionable and beautiful children, no more than 6 years old, participating. God bless them for chasing their dreams and paying their dues in the trenches. I could never take that away from them. But I have to wonder.... how much of it really is their dream? How kind will the world be to them in chasing their dream? Not very. What are their chances, after paying their dues, of keeping their head on straight and seeing through the smoke and mirrors that is fame? Celebrities whose lives have turned into train wrecks just make me sad for them and those who choose to laugh at them. Sure they chose that life. But everything is supersized there. The myth of Hollywood hangs in the air. Its intense and its intoxicating. I even found myself groping in the smoke and mirrors a bit and I was just watching that world from a bus window and meandering in and out of it on our various stops.

There are many things and places that make my soul sing in SoCal and many people who I think would be my kindred spirits especially compared to my current locale. I have to say though that going back there was exactly the stark contrast I needed to show me where I was back then to where I am now as well as how much some things never change.

Much needed reality check!

Blessed Timing

I got some news a couple of days ago that I am not happy about. I am once again being railroaded in my search for my birth family by the laws in their current form. More hoops to jump through, more time to wait. More sadness is building too. I'm still in the stage of anger. It is not the seething anger of the past though....or at least a lesser degree of seething. I still wonder when my government and fellow citizens will look at me and finally see the need and demand that I be treated in the same manner as them. I wonder when my identity will not be a "state secret" and kept from me "for my own good." Time and a lot of hard work have healed or are currently healing me from many of my emotional wounds. This is where I have to defer to my faith in my God that gave me this information at time when I could better cope with it and not be quite so derailed by it. Right now I'm more sad than anything. Sad for people's lack of empathy. Sad for many things. I will not be derailed though. I will still do all I can to help people understand and pray for that day to come. In the meantime, I've got a life to lived and for once I actually have a desire to really do something about it. So off I go.............

Emotional Vomit

I've only told one friend about this blog. I know that it is publicly searchable so I don't know if someone in Timbuktu or Vancouver or Ireland has found this. This was my reason for creating this blog. I still want a degree of anonymity but I also feel this fantastic need to reach out and share my story and my struggles. That is why I made it publicly searchable. I will tell you why one more time.

I know the nature of adoption, especially if its a closed adoption. For the adoptee, it forces a certain silence. It requires a degree of self sacrifice. It forces your knees to bend and to bow in submission and gratitude for being "saved" or "chosen" even if the circumstances they come into through adoption are even worse. Some can deal with it. Some...like me are continually dealing with it. Some force it down and pretend like its not an issue. Who are they harming? Themselves. Denial is never a good thing even if it is serving the purpose of sheer survival as it did for me. It will come out in the end in some way, shape or form. There is a beautiful side and a truly ugly side to adoption. Never has there been more of a need to understand the truly ugly side than now. I find myself repeating over and over again both here and in my conversations with people the need to look beyond the "rescuing" aspect. I repeat a lot of things. I find myself thinking of new ways to say the same things hoping that maybe that will be the ticket to universal understanding. This is why I use the term "emotional vomit". I stole this from the friend who I've told about this blog. But to me it fits because when you are truly sick to your stomach you don't just vomit once, you do it multiple times....however many times it takes to get the junk out. I'm speaking. Its not pretty. Maybe someday people will start to listen.

Christmas this year!

I really had such high hopes for this holiday season. No working retail. It sounded like a good start. I even decorated a big tree which my roommates love and several visitors have complimented us on. It all worked for a few days. Then reality set in. All the Christmas trees and music and holiday sweet treats are not working.

MY FAMILY (SO WHOSE FAMILY ISN'T DYSFUNCTIONAL ON SOME LEVEL?)

I had a wise friend of mine who I chat with over the Internet just put my dilemma so simply today. He talked about how his family is in no way traditional. He is a fellow adoptee and talked a bit about his struggles with his family. It made me realize that perhaps I'm fighting for and wanting something I won't ever have with my current family. Maybe I can find a spouse who can give me what I am looking for. But with the personalities of my family right now it will never be "traditional". That would involve me changing them to fit my ideal and that just won't happen. To their credit, my parents have come a long way in being more sensitive. But those annoying personality things will always be there. The sooner I accept that, the better off I will be. I just get so tired because of the face I have to put on when I am around them. I can't be myself around them. I never have been able to. I have to be the me that they are comfortable with. I know that this is a common dynamic with parents and their adult children. It doesn't change it from being utterly exhausting and fodder for self-flagellation for months to come. I realize that there are people who feel misplaced in their natural families. it just seems a lot more common in families touched by adoption. I hate it. I crave having somewhere to belong. I really want to believe that my family has my back. They do help out a lot but some of that is contingent upon the face I present to them.

FELLOW OCCUPANTS OF PLANET EARTH

I put on a face for the world. It says that I'm ok with being a lone wolf. Most of the time I am. I also know that we humans are programmed to be interdependent, to need each other in various ways. I guess the trick is to find the healthy balance of independence and dependence.....interdependence. Throughout my life I have reached out and tried to include people in my life. Some say great and stick around for a little while. Some say whatever and stick around even less and some have flat out said no. I know that is just the way life rolls and I can accept that. Humans tend to have some sort of game or angle or need that they are stealthily trying to fulfill. This adoption thing is me. Its part of my package. I've had everyone tell me all kinds of stuff about how I should feel and how I should deal with all the crazy feelings I have about my adoption. They try to fix me. They always have. It destroys the happy stories they've always been told about adoption. Yes I am not good for adoption image and PR. It messes with people's equilibrium for me to be like this. So to make themselves feel better I become a fixer upper project. I cannot stand that! I am me. I am occasionally witty. I try to be empathetic all the time. I like to smile and laugh to get a break from the constant dull ache in my heart. I have my issues but I am trying to deal with them in my own way and learning more and more all the time. I've had to learn and relearn a lot of things about human interaction throughout this process. Just because I want to spread the truth about adoption and increase awareness does not mean I am an evil monster.

LOSING FAITH IN THE FELLOW OCCUPANTS OF PLANET EARTH

I took a dumb quiz on the Internet not too long ago where one of the questions really summed up how I feel right now about the holidays. It has been there in the past when I worked retail because the same feelings would come up watching the lengths that people would go to for the commercialized ideal of Christmas. It was sickening. My head would literally spin. But I digress.....back to the quiz. It said something along the lines of when do you know it's the holidays. One of the answers was.....when I have once again lost all faith in humanity. This is too true for me. I thought I might escape it this year and be able to stay hopeful because of not working retail. The election this year about did me in. In past election years I have tried to get involved and then just lost it because of the whole game of politics and how dirty and ridiculous things would inevitably become. But I stuck it out. It took me weeks to decompress but I somehow managed it.

I voted for Obama because I felt that he spoke to hopes and dreams. I felt stirred up in fear and loathing every time I listened to McCain and the thought of Palin just gave me the dry heaves. For my own sanity, I can't afford to lose all faith in my fellow human beings. I'm already wrapped up in various fears about my past and how to live my life now. I have to have some hope. For example, I want to believe that I made the right choice by voting for Obama. I want to believe that he and his buddies had NOTHING to do with the whole Blagojevich thing, not just being two steps ahead of it. I want to believe in you Pres. Elect Obama. Please don't make me a fool for believing in you. I'm willing to stand up and do more to help out like you asked for. I'm kind of worried about Rahm Emmanuel and Hillary Clinton as Cabinet choices. People like Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh are sticking in my brain too. These two are the guys who are going to be the monkey wrenches for Obama. Between these guys and the fact that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi seem to be showing more of their true colors I'm starting to lose the hope that I felt on November 5th. The fact that Palin's 15 minutes haven't run up yet and blowhards like Mitch McConnell and Saxby Chambliss managed to get reelected make me want to put a gun to my head. Then there were a couple of local elections that just iced the cake of ridiculousness. See! I told you! Politics make my head explode! I need to believe that Obama really isn't going to be Bush-Lite. On that note, I need to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld etc. will not be able to escape justice anymore. They need to be held accountable for their actions. There needs to be justice for Darfur and people caught under regimes like Mugabe's too. There needs to be justice for those whose greediness has brought our economy to its knees. There needs to be justice for all the things done in greediness to this planet of ours. We have been given a stewardship and we are failing at it. There needs to be justice for all things done in private which have so completely damaged the lives of its victims. People who profit off of other's pain and misfortune are particularly irking to me. They are the ones that I would most like to see brought to justice. I come from Christian upbringing and have spent a lot of time trying to reconcile everything done in the name of God, religion, etc. It is utter insanity. No love, just greediness and selfishness. I believe there will be justice in the end. That brings me a lot of comfort. But how many people have to die and suffer so exquisitely before the justice comes?

The Spy Book Genre Writers Should Study My Life...

War games, espionage, KGB/CIA etc. That's nothing. We're talking about true mind games here, memory erasing, everything. Only a select few know the classified dealings of the innermost sanctums of our lovely United States government. For this level of concern, I must have known something or been something truly dangerous even though I was only a newborn baby. Maybe my birthmother or father knew something they shouldn't have and this was their punishment. So the plan moved forward. Let's take a look at the secret meeting. Pan left on the scene opener where I was given a substitute family for "my own good". Hell, they done themselves good! They are scoring themselves a bonus because they say I even look like my substitute family. It's all too perfect. The ruse is completed with a nice pat on the back. Now the kicker is to say that this child must never know. We will lock up her identity and make it so she never finds out the truth. She might even grow up knowing she's with a substitute family. In fact, we'll encourage it. These new parents should let her know how she was "saved " and that she is "special" and what "blessing" she is. But all of this is top secret classified. Everything is done by intermediaries. The more "cloak and dagger" the better. Why is all this stuff "for my own good?" Because I am………….A BASTARD CHILD! 32 years later I'm still a bastard child, not a bastard adult! Oh the horrors! I need to be protected from my illegitimacy, from the stain of my birthparents' sin.

I have a few words to say to these lovely people!

Oh wonderful day! You have saved me from myself. You have protected my parents from ever having to face the consequences of their actions. How can I ever begin to thank you oh mighty and fallible US government and corrupt and sanctimonious adoption industry? Truthfully, you really have not done any of us any favors in the way you do business. I am not a state secret. I am not a commodity to sell to the parents willing to pay the highest bid. I am a human being. I may not have been created in the "ideal" state of marital love but that does not mean that I don't deserve my roots just as much as any other human being. My life is a paradox. I have dual realities to live with. I was both chosen and denied. Do have any idea of the confusion and helplessness that comes from trying to reconcile these dual realities? There are some valuable tools that are missing thanks to you. It gets kind of tricky improvising too. It's just a whole rat's nest that is difficult to explain and it's sad that I even have to say these things. So here's a novel idea! Let my birth parents and I decide if we want to be in each other's lives. Biological ties exist for a reason. By holding my information for ransom you are profiting from my losses and deciding what is best for me. Who are you to make that decision for me? Who are you trying to protect? Why do you keep tying hands when the logic that pervaded in the past has been proven wrong time and time again? Us adoptees and birth families are hurting big time. We don't need to be protected. We need the truth. Please stop profiting off our pain and let us make the decisions we need to make for our relationships. If some of your dirty dealings in this area are exposed then the public will be all the better for it. We already ready know you make mistakes. We see evidence of it every day. Quit trying to make yourselves look better than you are!

TTFN

Self Imposed Silence Comes At A Price

Don't ask me why I do this. I'm kidding myself when I act like I don't know the reason for my brain stuffage. I know exactly the reason why I have been so silent this week. It's because on Sunday I was in a room with about 30 people. There was a discussion going on about documenting one's own life so that the future generations can have record of life on this planet….at least the ones that will exist until the earth blows up, burns down, floods over or whatever catastrophes of Biblical proportions are to come. I understand that everyone has their struggles and things that they are not proud of or painful memories they would rather not rehash. I was absolutely dying by this point because I KNOW without a doubt with all the things that I have been through that………

1.) Painful memories don't get easier by refusing to think about them. No matter how far you push them away or stuff them down with food or drown them out with alcohol (pick your vice) it just simply does not go away. In fact the harder you push, the more it festers. That is why my 20's sucked so badly. All the anger and hurt and frustration that I had been stuffing down unconsciously with food for all those years growing up came tumbling out in a very messy way and I'll be damned if I could stop it. Once I read the adoption books and started exploring that avenue I told myself that I hadn't known that that's what all my sadness was attributed to. I know I even said it in my maiden blog post. But if I want to be totally honest with myself I truly have to admit that I did know and that I was not letting myself go there. That would mean that the face I had put on was false and that I really wasn't OK with being adopted. In fact I was very pissed off. But I couldn't be pissed off. I couldn't risk being more ungrateful than I already was told that I was.

2.) I really just wanted to tell these people to stop being so selfish. Their progeny was going to want to know them. If their children and grandchildren etc. choose to judge them unkindly because of things they did or went through then that is not on their heads. What will be is the fact that they are not providing a history for them to know and to learn from. I know next to nothing about my birth family. I know loads of stuff about the family that I was put into and told that their history would be mine. I'm sorry but it doesn't work that easily. I would be ecstatic beyond belief to know my natural family. Everything in me CRAVES it. I don't care about any of their skeletons or foibles or whatever. I just want to know something about me and where I come from. I have a partial history aka my memories of my years on this planet. For my own sanity, I really do try to not let what I don't know ruin what I do know. Sometimes I really can't help it. When I get into conversations or situations where I see people who take that for granted it just gets to me and I react very viscerally. I shouldn't. I pretty much have to forgive the world for its ignorance because it is such an unbelievably primal feeling to be able to look at their families and see themselves mirrored. Most people just do not have the framework to be able to comprehend what it would be like to not have that. Adoptees do. I was told quite a bit that I look like my family so some people never believed that I was adopted. That never worked for me because I know just how different I am from my family. Looking back now I realize that it only served to rub salt in the wound because it implied that I shouldn't have felt uncomfortable because not only was I "saved", I also got the privilege of "looking like" my family. A close to perfect replica. Isn't close enough good enough?

This sounds like a lot of thoughts to be having. Believe me. It's easy for thoughts to race like this when discussions are touching you in such a raw and visceral way. But this is the kicker. I never spoke up. My thoughts were racing because I knew what I felt and I spent a goodly portion of the discussion listening with half an ear while the other half was trying to devise a way to say this in as neutral a way as possible. I needed to speak up and did I? NO! I was too worried, once again, about sounding whiny and offending people! So I was shaken and knocked down off my high horse about being "silenced no more". Who was I kidding? I got knocked down good because I have held all this in all week. Hence the mind clutter and now it's all coming out like Niagara Falls with more on the way. I guess like everything else it’s a journey. I should be more realistic. I'm not going to speak my mind 100% of the time right off the bat. At least I'm trying.