The Beginning…

Part 1: The beginning

In order to get the full picture of how I even got to this place I’m describing, I think it’s important to go back to the very beginning of my story. Yes, it’s one of those books where I tease you on the first page but then we have to go way back in time to get back there. It’ll be worth it though, I promise.

I’d like to think that my origin story was one comprised of two people in love who wanted to bring a child into this world. Two people who would love and care for that child. Watch her grow, teach her things and support her as she got older. I’d like to think that this was my origin story so much that this idea fills my thoughts often. I watch television and watch other people I know with their families and how they interact; how much love there is between the people I’m observing and I am filled with envy. It’s not a shallow envy either, its the type of envy that lives in the deepest parts of your body, like it’s infiltrated me to the bone. There is a desperate part inside me that wishes for that. I know I’m supposed to be all “I wouldn’t be who I am today without everything that’s happened to me” but I would be interested to see how different things might have been if none of it had ever happened. I was the second child of these two parents, the first of which had already been adopted. These particular parents were not suited for parenthood and had addictions that would make it impossible for them to parent another child. 

My Adoption

My birth parents were two people who didn’t have what it took to raise a child. The circumstances were such that I wasn’t safe in their care so I was taken in by my paternal grandparents. For all intents and purposes, they were and are my parents. They raised me. They were always open with me regarding the fact that I was adopted. No secret “surprise!” we’re not your birth parents at any point in childhood. I knew from a very young age that I was and it never felt weird to me or like something that I was “different” for, it just felt like this is my life. Five years after I was born (and two after I was adopted) my birth father had a baby with his new wife (not my birth mother) and I remember going up to visit her when she was newly born. I had a sister. She was my sister and she always felt like my sister even though we only saw each other for an average of maybe one to two weeks a year and never lived in the same house or city.  This was a somewhat normal occurrence in my family, keeping that connection between our two families alive. If there was ever any animosity between the two nuclear families, I never felt it. I only felt the love. 

Looking back at my childhood now as a thirty two year old woman, I always felt loved as a child and I truly wanted for nothing but always felt like an outsider too, like I didn’t quite fit in. As I said prior, it wasn’t overt like I was an outsider because I was adopted and that was something to be ashamed of but it was more of an internal feeling I had inside. To be honest, that isn’t something I had ever really understood until writing this out right now. I was always in two worlds. The world that my parents created for me that I absolutely loved and adored and the one where I was back with my would have been family that was still working and functioning and had essentially moved on without me. That is an apt description for much of the way I felt throughout my life moving forward, that my family was moving on without me. Without consideration for me. I think that’s one thing that people who don’t have a first hand experience with being adopted realize. It was a wonderful experience to be taken in and loved by two people who loved me better than my family of origin could have but that love doesn’t make up for the deep seeded internal knowing that I was in a position from birth that left me having to be taken in by another family because the one I was born into couldn’t take care of me properly. As I grew into my teen years, my birth fathers family would begin and continue to take their feelings about my adoption out on me as if I was the right person to be projecting them onto. There goes that thin veil covering up the animosity. That’s the thing about humans, we’re all a lot more self-centered than we want to admit. I understand where they were coming from. They probably looked at me and felt sadness, felt like they wanted me closer, wanted me around more but instead of communicating that to me they made back handed comments about my dad and decisions he had made during my adoption. This had the opposite effect than I’m sure what was intended. It made me want distance, put me in a position where I felt like I had to (and wanted to) protect my Dad because at the end of the day thats what he was. The person who raised me. The person who saved me. The person who chose to love me every day. As I said before, I truly felt that love. So any longing I had to spend more time with my sister was not enough to outweigh the love I felt in my home every day of my life and I fiercely wanted to protect that.

While that connection between my birth father and his new nuclear family always stayed connected, the one with my birth mother was nonexistent. I was told by family members that she didn’t seem suited to motherhood and was never all that interested in being a parent. This is a fact I would corroborate personally much later. Now, of course, I don’t remember this part of my life because I was too young but knowing what I know now about trauma, it is evident that my body remembers. My adoption was finalized when I was around three years old; I even remember being in court and the judge letting me wrap his gavel on the desk when the final decision had been made. I was wearing a very 90’s dress, light blue with a floral pattern and a white collar that laid flat around the neck of the dress, white tights and white shoes. I remember being excited. I didn’t have the cognition to understand what was really happening at the time but the people who had been raising me thus far were happy, the judge seemed happy, so I was happy too. I’ve never been the kind of person who was upset with their birth parents for not having the capabilities to parent me when I was born. I understood from a very young age that there was a reason I had been adopted and I knew I was in a better situation. I’ve been compassionate from such a young age and have always been able to see situations for what they are and do my best not to place blame where it wasn’t due. The second reason I believe I never felt abandoned by them specifically was that I was raised in the most loving home a child could ask for. I literally wanted for nothing when it came to my parents attention and support.Their love for me was seeping out of them all over our lives and that was more than enough for me to feel okay. Not to mention, it didn’t seem to impact much of our broader family either. They all just loved me and accepted me. They saw that I needed help and they took me in and they raised me. Of course parents who give birth to their own children love them like any parent would but I think there is something different to being chosen like that. I felt special. 

For the next seven years, everything felt perfect. I miss the simplicity of that time in my life more than I can even express. When I was halfway through my tenth year, my family dynamic changed forever. I am now thirty two years old and still picking up the pieces of the aftermath of what would happen next.