I was told I was abandoned near a police station, and then a man delivered me to an adoption agency. A baby abandoned on the street, alone. As you can probably guess I might have abandonment issues I’d rather not deal with. I don’t even know my real birthday. My adoption agency gave my non biological parents their best guess. I have identity issues daily, I feel a large and invisible barrier from my white friends (even all of my friends) because they will never even come close to feeling the way I do. I am an only child in my family, and sometimes I dream about the fact that I was born during the one child only rule in China so that must mean I have siblings, and I was the one given up. I have no emotional attachment to my biological mother or father, I never knew them and I never will. I cannot even picture two people who look like me who are my biological parents. I just wanted to write this and maybe someone else will be able to finally connect with some of the experiences I have had.
Dear Adoption, I need you to hear me - without interrupting or forming a response before I finish. I am adopted, not you. I have experienced it, not you. My entire existence has been shaped by the construct of adoption, leaving me incapable of imagining my life otherwise. You cannot imagine, so for once, just shut up and listen.
Dear Adoption, do not tell me how I feel. When I say anything concerning my families or my feelings toward them - or adoption in general - do not contradict me as if you know better. As if you have any idea the complex emotions and psychological mindfuck adoption creates. As if you have any basis of knowledge on the subject. You don’t.
Dear Adoption, you have no idea the harm you did, in the name of A Better Life. You cannot know, so do not impose on me your opinions and expect me to take them as my own, like I had to when I was given a false birth certificate and forced to declare it as fact. Do not pretend you have a clue what it feels like to swear you are one thing when you are genetically another.
You do not know my pain, Adoption, because you cannot admit you are the cause of it. You want to think you saved me - that I would have been an abortion statistic without you, that my mother and I would have lived on the streets unless you came along. You are full of yourself, Adoption. So self-absorbed that when I - the product that makes you exist - attempt to share my reality, my truth, you immediately shut me down. You cannot handle that the perpetual child I am in your eyes does anything except sing your praises.
You shame me. You silence me. You attempt to control the narrative. You lie. You pout. You tell me it hurts you that I could state anything other than how happy I am. You lecture me that my “real” parents are the ones who raised me, that biology is meaningless, that I was better off being adopted no matter the actual circumstances. You say I should feel blessed and chosen. But you don’t stop there, Dear Adoption. You tell me how I actually feel.
When I say I feel I don’t belong anywhere, you say I feel lucky to be adopted.
When I say I consider myself a commodity, you say I actually feel like a gift.
When I say I long to connect with my birth family, you say “those people” mean nothing to me.
When I say I miss my original mother, you say I have abandonment issues.
When I say I mourn my bio-father, you say I cannot grieve someone I never met.
When I say I carry great pain, you say you wish you were adopted.
Dear Adoption, do not presume to understand the magnitude of what you’ve done or, worse, to explain it to me. The psychological warfare you wage only focuses my anger where it belongs: at you. You cannot control me with your talk of “God’s plan” and you cannot make me parrot your platitudes. Thousands of us have found our voice and we will not be silenced. Because, Dear Adoption, someday you will be on the wrong side of history - like slavery - and no amount of gaslighting you do now will change that.
As I’ve gotten older it’s become more and more difficult to be excited about my birthday when I don’t even know if it’s my real day of birth. It was estimated I was born around this date by the police who found me abandoned in Ahmednagar as an infant (I was found on January 10th and was believed to be about a day old). Nevertheless, 23 years ago sometime around this day, these hands last touched my birthmother. To me, this day is bittersweet…it means I grow older, but it also means more time separates me from her. I don’t really know how to explain it. I think only an adoptee would truly understand what I’m trying to say. It hurts my heart to know she is out there somewhere remembering me. I will never know who she is or where she is, but every year on this day I say a prayer that she is well and safe and has found peace with letting me go.
When I was in the 1st grade, my parents made my sister and I crawl everyday for an hour. They told us that since we never got to crawl in our orphanages, we missed an important developmental milestone. We had to do this for 2 more years. It was degrading and humiliating. After all, I wasn’t a toddler anymore, so why should I crawl? It’s clear I already missed that stage. It led to me having really low self esteem, and I didn’t interact well with other kids because of that.Since I had trouble with being social with others, my parents decided to put me in therapy. I hated it. Why would I tell my problems to a stranger paid to talk to me? They switched therapists, and put me into a group therapy session. I refused to talk to anyone. I didn’t understand it at all. Why was I being forced by my parents to go to therapy to ‘fix’ a problem that they essentially created? Going to therapy ultimately lowered my confidence even more. My sister was allowed to stop going, but I was not. I felt like I wasn’t the child my parents wanted, because they always tried to 'fix’ me; to make me be how they wanted. They never seemed to realize that made me feel even more isolated. I was too old to be treated like a baby. Yet I was too young to deal with all the problems that I was facing alone.