On Adoption

I'm adopted.

I am not blood-related to any of my family, relatives or otherwise.  It was a closed adoption.  It is now an inter-provincial closed adoption.  It does give me some dimension of anomaly.  Some people who are adopted go through their whole life and don't seem to care either way.  I have never been able to avoid thinking about it.

There is so much to think about on this for me, I will probably create multiple posts on it.  It is part of me.  It is often why I question things about myself.

I need to start by saying that the family I was blessed with is my family.  I have a mom, a dad and two sisters.  Having been told they would never have kids, my parents went onto an adoption waiting list for a baby.  I showed up.  I was 9 months old.  Soon after the start of our family, my mom found out she was pregnant much to both my parents' surprise.  My sister and I are exactly 2 years apart.  A week before Christmas and 2 days difference.  A few years later, my parents decided we weren't quite a complete family, and my youngest sister joined us via adoption as well.  None of my sisters look like me.  We barely resemble our parents.  My middle sister does, obviously.  We don't seem to have any shared traits among us... aside from strength, and more specifically, inner strength.  But we are a family.  We were always treated equally and fairly (that question always comes up) and consistently.  There were no favorites. We were not different.  We were never singled out as anything other than sisters and a family.  But we are 3 very different people and yet, we're one of the closest families I know.

Still... I'm adopted.  I can't look at my hands and see whose fingers I have or why I am proned to puffiness and weight fluctuations.  I don't know why I am as blind as I am and need glasses or contacts to see.  I can't pinpoint the fact that I had thyroid issues on my genealogy.  Because I don't know the answers to that.  When I gave birth to my son, he looked nothing like me.  He was ALL his father's side.  Did he have any physical or DNA trait that he received from me?  I remember bathing him and changing his diaper and examining him for proof he was mine.  So, the fact that I'm adopted has always been in the back of my mind.  How could it not be?

I used to wonder what life would have been like, staying with a teen mom.  I had friends growing up who had young moms.  Often they had step-dads, or no dads.  Often their moms seemed to be very strict, like "I know what you're doing but I'll be damned if you're going to make my same mistakes" and then they wouldn't be able to date until they were like, 21 and going to a supervised, mixed-gender party in eighth grade was NEVER going to happen.

I used to dream, when I got myself in shit as a teenager, that life would be so different with "her".  It would be light and fluffy and fun.  Not at all like the teen moms my friends had.  It could never be bad or hard or stressful (because, like any daydreamer, the grass is always greener, duh!)  My bio-dad was never really in the cards... I could take him or leave him.  But not knowing about my bio-mom used to consume me.  I am not even kidding when I use the word consume.  It was all day, everyday.  I used to write her letters in case I ever found her (that will need to be another post, because it's a loaded topic).  I lied about my age to search agencies.  I wrote letters and called The Children's Aid Society in Kitchener-Waterloo and did searches for my case worker. I would look for loopholes in searching to try and get around the inter-provincial or age thing.  I considered hiring a private investigator and not having a job, I would dream up ways to pay him/her.  I considered becoming a private investigator.  I searched libraries and archives and papers and records of any kind to find some type of evidence that might give me something to go on.  I looked for birth notices in every paper and even moved my birth date within 24 months to see if ANYTHING came up.  I even went to a psychic.  And this was all before the internet.  Ha, let me tell you, I have exhausted every avenue online too, for shits and giggles.

No, I do not want to find my bio-mom.  Which seems hard to believe, having just read that last paragraph.  And okay, let me be true here for a moment.  I don't WANT to find her, actively.  I would love to be found... or, more specifically, I would like to know that she wanted to know about me.  Better still, I would love to be the butterfly on the wall (an earlier post of mine referenced that, and I dig it more than 'the fly on the wall').  I would love to see her, in an everyday setting.  I would love to watch her grocery shop or I don't know, wait at the doctor's office or having coffee with a friend.  I would love to watch and observe her mannerisms or listen to how she pronounces something; how she pushes her hair out of her face or watch her walk away or just see what kind of shoes she's wearing.  I wouldn't want her to know that I'm there.  I wouldn't want to have a conversation with her or identify myself.  I don't want to be obligated to have a relationship with her.  I might not even care if I have siblings or not.  It may sound very stalker-esque, but not if you're a butterfly.

It all comes down to the fact that I love my family.  I love my mom and my dad and my two sisters.  They made me who I am and I like who I turned out to be.  In every sense of the words, they are my mom, my dad and my sisters. In every sense of extended family, we are fully part of those families as well.  My youngest sister and I are the only two in my mom's huge, extended family who are adopted but really, you'd never know it.  Not to see us together.

It took me many years to be fully accepting of that.  It took tears, counselling, fights and denial and facing emotions head-on.  It took a lot of stupid mistakes; it took a lot of healing; it took a hell of a lot of faith and forgiveness.  It wasn't like I one day just discovered I was adopted.  No, I knew from the day I went home with my family and all my life that "I was their special little adopted daughter whose mom wanted me to have a better life than she could offer me".

So the questions will remain unanswered, as far as I can predict.  I have stopped looking within the last  few years.  What if I found her?  What if I had a sibling find me, or even a grandparent?  What if my bio-dad found me...?  I don't know what I would do.  It changes from day to day, but I have stopped actively looking.  I mean, the thought crosses my mind that if I can't find her, she probably is either dead or doesn't want to be found.  Does she ever think of me?  I wonder what my birth date does to her.  Who actually gives up a baby and isn't even remotely curious about how they turned out?  Does she wonder if she made the right decision?  Who knows... maybe she died with me as her secret...

It's hard to not get all worked up about it, even now.  I cannot fathom the strength of character that it would take especially in this day and age, to NOT search for me; I'm out there.  I'm searchable.  I can be found. She can Google my birth date if she really wanted to and find me on an online registry, and not even just one! She probably has more to go on than me, so why doesn't she try anything... contact... anything?  I have been of age for so long and I have been registered for years...how can she not question every day if she made the right decision; how?  Maybe she's afraid.  Maybe she thinks I'm angry.  I might still have some pent up anger that I might lash out onto her.  I like to think I don't and I wouldn't, but there are too many questions.  If she ignored my feelings I can see how I would be angry.  And so, why would she want to do that to herself?  Why would I want to feel all of that brought to the surface again?

It was hard to let go of.  It still is... I think about it every day.  I think about the fact that I was adopted.  I think about my bio-mom.  I think about the family I was blessed with.  I think how can you not want to know when it is SO easy these days.  I think of my own kids.  I think too much about it; I know I do.  Even though I've dealt with a lot of it, I don't suppose I will ever resolve it; not fully.  Ugh... I wish I could let it go completely.  I wish it didn't bother me as much as it does.