Somewhere I belong

So, I've been here four days now and I am already starting to get stressed out about leaving.  It is another four days before that happens, five if one counts the day we are actually leaving, and it still seems much too soon.  I suppose that is to be expected, I've finally found somewhere I feel like I belong.  It is hard to think about leaving it and to know it is close at hand. 

My little ones told me today they wanted to live here so they could play with their cousins all the time.  I hope they get their wish, and soon.  I want to live here so I can "play" with my siblings.  I have no idea how much or how little we would have gotten along when we were children, but as adults we seem to do pretty well.  I don't want to feel like I am missing out anymore.  I have no idea how much I actually miss out on, they all have very busy lives and probably don't get nearly as much time together as it appears from the outside.  However I have a lot of missed time to try and make up for and I won't be able to do that from 1000 miles away. 

It is amazing how comfortable this has all been for me.  I rarely feel that way anywhere or with anyone.  I still have my issues, but they are much less when I am here.  That is a start at least.  Perhaps it will all work out.  I hope so, three years will be a long time to wait if it doesn't.

The kids are alright

My sister took some great pictures of the kids today.  She sent several of them to me this evening.  They look just as happy in the pictures as they sounded all day and looked every time I took a look at the playing they were doing together.  It is amazing how kids can just accept new situations and go on.  When we explained to the little ones about my mom and her family they just accepted it without a lot of questions or comments.  The questions they did ask made it clear they understood what we had told them, but they were fine with the whole thing.  They were just as accepting of all these brand new cousins.  All the cousins on this side of the family seemed to take them in just as easily.  I'm very glad my kids are able to have this sort of family connection in their lives.

Thinking about this has, of course, brought of my usual feelings of having missed out on the same experience.  I don't want to dwell on that now as this is supposed to be both short and perhaps a little more up beat.  With that in mind:

Trying to be a Brother

After a drive that seemed much too long we arrived in the middle of the night. It was a great feeling to be back, despite not knowing the area well I still felt like I was home.  Maybe there really is something to that saying about home being where the heart is.

As thrilled as I was to see my family again, and especially my brothers and sisters, I find myself at a little bit of a loss.  I don't know how to be anyone's brother.  I can pull off being a son, perhaps not very well given my past experience, but I have the general idea.  I can pull off being an uncle.  I feel like I am a pretty decent father, and being an uncle is like being a father without the same level of responsibility.   I have no experience being a brother and therefore no idea if I am doing it "right".

I didn't wish for siblings all the time when I was a child.  When I did I wanted a sister, but that was primarily when I was older.  I have a horrible track record of maintaining relationships with women.  I tend to push too hard because I believe they are going to leave.  I have often created what I was afraid of by pushing.  It took me a long time to figure it out, but I now believe that this problem goes back to my adoption related abandonment issues.

So, when I was wishing I had a sister what I was really wishing for was a surrogate mother.  Now that I find myself with not one but two sisters I also have an actual mother to fill that role that was empty for me for so long.  I've also finally managed to identify why I've had so many problems maintaining relationships with women over the years.  I'm speaking here of both romantic relationships and friendships.

So, given my terrible track record combined with the fact that I have no idea how to be anyone's brother, I'm worried I'll push too hard trying to build a relationship with my sisters and end up pushing them away instead.   This is another one of those issues where I have no frame of reference, I don't know how much is too much or too little from a brother.  This is the kind of thing one is supposed to learn over a lifetime,  not try and figure out as an adult.

I wouldn't trade this experience for the world, but every time I turn around there is another issue banging me on the head and demanding my attention.   They are often unexpected and may seem strange to an outsider.  It may well be easy to ask "what do you mean you do know how to be someone's brother?" If you are one and have been since childhood.  It is very different to have it thrust upon you in adulthood with only a single chance to get it right.

Lesson of the week, nothing is ever as easy or straight forward as it seems from the outside.

The First Visit

Well, it has been a couple of days since I posted anything.  We are leaving on Friday to visit the “new” family and I have been getting stuff together for that trip.  I also have a new nephew arriving sometime today (hopefully) via my wife’s sister who is at the hospital and may even be in labor as I write this (though by the time I manage to post it I expect he will have made his entrance). So, it has been a busy week and I haven’t found the time to rant, uh I mean write.

As this second visit approaches I think it is probably time to talk about the first one.  It was pretty short, not nearly enough for something I had been waiting a lifetime for (even if I didn’t know I was waiting for it for most of that lifetime, I still was).  I left for the airport from work, underestimating the amount of time I’d need by a little bit because I didn’t take into account the fact that I would have to park in the “nose bleed” parking and take a shuttle to the terminal.  I’ve traveled a lot, fairly regularly by plane, but I don’t think I’ve ever flown anywhere alone before.  Every trip I can remember doing alone in the past I drove. Anyway, the wait for the shuttle and then a long line to check my bag conspired to make me later than I planned.  Luckily my flight was slightly delayed (yes, that is some unusual luck, but in this case the delay was lucky) and I ended up with about the same amount of time to spare as I originally planned. 

The flight was uneventful, and it was non-stop so no layover to drag out the anticipation.  My sister picked me up at the airport.  I was very excited to finally meet her after months of exchanging emails and text messages.  I spent a couple of minutes wondering around in front of the airport trying not to be creepy looking in peoples’ cars trying to find her.  It is amazing how many cars there are of the same make and model when you are looking for a specific one.  I did find the right one eventually. 

I can’t adequately describe what it was like to hug my sister for the first time so I won’t try.  Needless to say it was great.  I dropped my bag in the trunk and off we went.  I was rather amused when I got in the car and it was a manual.  I thought I was one of the last souls on earth committed to the manual transmission (most of the vehicles I have owned over the course of my life have been “row your own”), but apparently there are a few others out there.  I was staying with mom and dad, but we made a detour to my sister’s house so I could meet her husband and the one of her three children that was still awake when I arrived. 

At this point I have to break the story for an amusing anecdote: Apparently my mom, not knowing who or where I was, was worried for some years that one of my sisters might bring me home as a boyfriend.  This sort of thing is not outside the realm of possibility, it is actually not unusual for siblings who don’t grow up together and are unaware they are related to be attracted to each other.  Given the fact that for about ten years we lived in relatively close proximity it was at least in theory possible.  What makes this amusing is that the younger of my two sisters (the one who got me at the airport) married a man who is my age; I’m only four months older than he is.  The older of my two sisters is the same age as my wife; my wife is only four months older than my sister.  So, the ages in both directions match.  Thankfully the people did not.

So after meeting my brother in law and niece it was off to see my mom (dad being already in bed).  Mom and I are both kind of night owls; it is nice to know where I get it.  I’m really bad at going to bed, even when I have to be up early.  When I have to be up early I tend to miss out on sleep rather than miss out on staying up.  So, we sat up and talked.  My sister begged off, something about having to work in the morning.  One would almost think she had a family to support or something.

The next day I met everyone else, starting in the morning with my other sister.  She is also fantastic.  She is very different from our younger sister, yet I seem to have a fair amount in common with both of them.  It was surreal.  This is the morning when the “shag carpet incident” I have described before took place.  She originally turned up without her children since they were in school, but she eventually left to get them and brought them over, so I got to meet my niece and nephew also.  As expected, they are great kids.  I was expecting to like her, I wasn’t expecting to feel the connection I did to her right away, but it was there.  Having no frame of reference I probably shouldn’t have gone into the weekend with any expectations at all, but I’m not sure that would have been possible. 

Next up was my youngest brother.  We are eighteen years apart, he was born a week after I turned 18, just a few months before I graduated from high school.  So, I didn’t really know what to expect.  I shouldn’t have worried.  He reminds me a little bit of me at that age, more driven than I was, but I see the resemblance.  He has a great sense of humor, or at least what I consider a great sense of humor, which probably means the poor guy has to explain it to a large percentage of the population much as I have been doing all of my life.

Finally I met the older of my brothers, who is still 15 years younger than me but doesn’t seem that way.   I suspect, though I have no personal experience, that going to war will do that to you.  He is definitely the hardest to read.  Even so, I see some things we have in common, not the least of which is being terrible at keeping up communications with people.  I was a little shocked when I saw him because every picture I saw of him he was clean shaven and when I met him he had a pretty full beard.  The beard does work for him though, I approve and so did my oldest son when he saw the picture.  Some guys can do beards, like my brother.  Others, like me, cannot.  Well, to be fair I have never had a beard, but I don’t think I can pull it off.  I tried to grow one once, but after five days it was annoying me so much I shaved.  I have to hand it to my brother though, he makes the beard work and he is no hipster.  I’m looking forward to getting to know him better.  I get the impression there is a lot to know.

That Friday night was the first time in my life I was in the presence of so many people I was related to.  Really related to, not “related to” because a court somewhere said we were related or because the state falsified my birth certificate. There was a moment, not too long after my younger sister arrived with all her children and husband, when I looked around and realized I was in the presence of three generations of real, authentic family for the first time in my life.  People I not only shared DNA with, but physical features, personality traits, a common sense of humor (everyone has it to one extent or another, I never had to explain a joke the whole weekend), and a bond.  In that moment I finally knew what had always been missing from my life, a sense of belonging.  I always felt uncomfortable at “family” gatherings in the past.  I felt like a third wheel, a square peg, whatever cliché one wants to use.  I never knew what was missing because I had never before had this experience.  I had no frame of reference upon which to evaluate my feelings of discomfort. It took me 43 years to find out why it always felt wrong before.  It felt that way because I never felt like I belonged with the people I was with.  I had to meet the people I did belong with before I could understand that was the problem.

Much of the rest of the weekend really is a blur.  I was on a natural high of belonging for the first time in my life.  I had a great time and really enjoyed everyone’s company.  I feel like I made a reasonably good impression, but being the person I am there are always lingering doubts.  Too many years feeling disconnected, out of place, and unimportant to ever really believe people would want to spend time with me. 

When I left on Monday afternoon I felt like I was leaving home rather than returning to it.  For at least the rest of the week, and it may well have been longer, I was extremely down and difficult to be around.  The crash from the natural high was not easy.  Three and a half days was not enough time after 43 years in the wilderness.  To be fair I’m not sure there will ever be enough time, but every day I miss with them now seems wasted after so many missed already. 

This is where it becomes difficult to explain and to understand.  Anyone who is the product of a closed adoption doesn’t need to have it explained to them, they understand already if they have considered their circumstances seriously. At best, an adopted person has their children to see themselves in.  If they have no children then they have no one.  Even if they have children, until those children are born, they have no one in which they can see themselves, see traits they share, see where they came from or (in the case of children) are headed.  That may not seem important, but it is when it isn’t there. 

I have no doubt that my appearance in my siblings’ lives is a big deal to them.  They have certainly made me feel welcome and as if I had always been part of the family.  They cannot share my experience as a whole simply because their circumstances were different.  I don’t fault them for that, I don’t fault anyone; it simply is.  Some things did change for them, they are now 5 instead of 4, my oldest sister is no longer the oldest child, they all have a terribly long winded brother to get to know, and the list goes on.  I don’t mean to minimize their experience.  It is just a different experience than mine.  I went from having only two people one the planet so far as I knew who shared my DNA, and they were my children, to having 12 in the blink of an eye.  I went from being an only child with no experience of being anyone’s brother to being the oldest of five.  I went from having no nieces or nephews on my side of the family to having four and one respectively.  Most importantly I went from feeling as if I had nowhere I belong to knowing exactly where I belong.  This experience has completely changed my life.  That change has been almost universally for the better, what little bit has not be is caused primarily by the distance I am away and it would mostly be solved by being closer.  My other issues were not caused by this discovery; they were simply brought to my attention by it.  At least knowing about them I can work on dealing with them.

So, it is time to bring this to an end. There is more packing to do, and as I suspected my newest nephew has arrived before I even finished writing this, let alone gotten around to posting it.  One more work day, then one long drive, and I’ll be back home where I belong, for a little while at least.

     

Taking a trip

I haven't yet written about my first visit to my mom's where I met all my brothers and sisters.  I need to do that, it is very important and something I want to get down.  I'm tired tonight though and want to get to bed, so tonight isn't the night. 

I'm going again on Friday, but this time I'm taking my whole family with me.  They haven't met any of my brothers and sisters or their children, so this will be the visit for it.  Perhaps it will all start to seem real then, I hope so.  The last six months have had a very dreamlike quality; I keep expecting to wake up and discover I still only have a mother who prefers poodles over me.  Speaking of the poodle woman I really should respond to the email she sent me a few days ago before she starts complaining about my lack of a response.  Sometimes it is very hard to maintain the required calm when dealing with her, especially now.

I'm very glad my children are going to be meeting their aunts, uncles, and cousins from my side of the family.  They have known my wife's since birth, but until six months ago I didn't have anyone on my side for them to know.  This provides another sand trap on the road that is adoption.  I am thrilled that my kids get to meet my side of the family and have always known my wife's.  I'm happy that my wife gets to meet them, and happy she has her own as well.  I don't even have the words to describe how it has changed my life to have all these people come into it and be so accepting of me.  However, because I don't know anyone who has had this experience or who has had an experience similar to mine prior, I don't know anyone who really understands.  That isn't to say I want my kids to understand how hard it is to never fit in anywhere no matter how much "family" might be around.  I don't what them to ever experience that.  Happily, they are growing up with their real family and shouldn't ever know what it is like to be the single round peg in a family of square pegs living in a square house.

The problem, of course, is that I don't have anyone that really understands the impact this had and is still having on me.  I can't really explain it, it is something that has to be felt, and I have no one who can feel it with me.  So I try, very poorly, to write about it.  This is why when I left last time I felt like I was leaving home rather than going home.  It is why I am sure I will feel that way again when it is time to leave.  It is also why I feel constantly out of place here, not just some of the time as I did before this started, but all the time.  More feelings I can't describe because I haven't had them before.  It is all very difficult to explain.  As tired as I am I should stop trying for now...

Family doesn't become family because a court orders it or the state fakes some records...

There is a general narrative in the United States when it comes to adoption.  It goes something like this:

Natural Parents want their privacy, once they do their “duty” and “gift” their child they are out of the picture and are never to be thought of again.  They are promised privacy when relinquishing their child and that must be respected above all other considerations.  The only exception to this rule is in the case of open adoptions which almost no one is really comfortable with no matter what they might say. 

Adoptive parents are saints; they take on the children of others and love them as their own.  They are totally selfless and are to be exalted.  Their primary job is to provide a “better life” for the children they adopt than the natural parents could ever hope to provide.  As such, if a conflict ever arises between the natural parents and the adoptive parents as to who has the right to parent the child the media and society will always side with the adoptive parents.

Adoptees have a very limited role in the accepted narrative.  We are supposed to make as little fuss as possible and be grateful for being adopted.  Our primary purpose is to reinforce the narrative: adoption is always good, always leads to a better life, and we are always grateful for it.  We are not supposed to show any interest in our natural families and always affirm our adoptive parents as our “real parents” whenever some clod feels the need to poke that particular sore spot looking to validate their own myopic ideas.

There is only one tiny problem with the adoption narrative as propagated in the United States, its complete crap. 

Is that a bold statement?  Not really.  While there may be a handful of natural parents out there who wanted their privacy they were never and could never be promised it.  The nature of court proceedings in adoption cases prevents any sort of guarantee of privacy since parental rights have to be terminated long before records are sealed with a final order of adoption.  If no adoption happens, no records are sealed, and no privacy exists. Furthermore the ownership of human beings is illegal; therefore the gifting of human beings is also illegal.  One cannot make a gift of something one does now own.  Using words like “gift” when talking about the pain associated with removing an infant from his mother is a disservice to everyone except the adoption industry that has turned infants into a commodity.

The idea that adoptive parents are somehow “better” than natural parents is laughable.  They are human, and like all other humans are prone to the same strengths and weaknesses as the rest of us.  Adoptive parents, like any other class of parents, still have those in their ranks that are abusive, neglectful, have mental disorders, get divorced, suffer financial setbacks, and die.  Nothing about adoptive parents makes them inherently better.  In order to adopt a child these days one has to have access to a lot of resources, but having resources is not the key to good parenting any more than the lack of resources is a sign of an inability to parent. 

Adoptees are expected to be grateful and feel lucky for having a “better life”.  The thing is we have no way of knowing if our lives are better or worse, we only know they are different.  Different and better are not synonyms.  As for being grateful, it is hard to feel grateful for being adopted when the reason one was available for adoption was that one was abandoned.  It’s never sold to the public that way of course, but that is how it feels.  For many of us adoptive parents can never provide exactly what we need, even if they are fantastic.  It isn’t their fault (if they are of the fantastic variety), it is likely that no one but the natural parents can.  Family isn’t family because a court says it is, or the state makes up some records.  The attachment has to be there.  If it isn’t, no amount of wishing for it will make it appear. 

We as a society have made adoption about finding babies for people who can’t have them the “old fashioned way” rather than about finding homes for children who need them.  In the huge majority of cases adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.  I think it does more harm than good, both to the parents and the children.  There are exceptions of course, some people simply cannot care for children and never will be able to or they are dangerous and would be a threat to their children.  For them, adoption probably is the right path, but they are a small minority.  We should be looking for ways to keep mothers and babies together; not trying to separate them so well off people can keep the industry going.  If those well off people truly want to parent there are plenty of children in foster care that desperately need permanent homes.

Well, it’s probably time to stop beating this particular dead horse for the night…

The Importance of Information

I've written about my lack of a "birth story" before.  I don't know if this is something that is generally seen as a big deal to people, but in my circle of friends and acquaintances I was the only one that didn't have one and it bothered me a lot.  I never spoke to anyone about it bothering me of course.  Adopted kids know not to rock the boat they have been hauled aboard.  I didn't know not to rock the boat because anyone told me that the subject of my adoption was off limits, I just knew it wasn't something to draw attention to.  So, whenever stories about my friends' births came up I listened and wondered about my own.  If these stories were told in the presence of my adoptive mother they usually resulted in her telling my "adoption story".  I think this story was supposed to make me feel like I had a story like everyone else, others seemed to like it, but it always made me uncomfortable.

It went something like this:  My soon to be "as if born to" parents were on some kind of trip.  A social worker attempted to contact them about having a baby boy available if they were "still interested" (you know, kind of like when a salesman calls to see if you are still interested in that used Honda you test drove last week).  The social worker, not being able to contact them, made contact with a co-worker/friend of my "mother to be".  That woman drove to their house and left a note in their mailbox with the information on it.  They got home from their trip and found the note, called the social worker, apparently were still interested, liked the financing terms and remaining balance of the warranty, and arranged to take title of their new "as if born to" slightly used 3 1/2 month old baby boy.  My adoptive mother was always really proud of the fact that they only had to pay $15 for me.  That always made it into the story somewhere.  Adoptions these days cost people thousands of dollars, tens of thousands usually.  In the 1980s when I heard this story the most they also cost substantially more than $15.  Apparently my mother felt that she got quite the bargain and wanted people to know it.  They took delivery of me in late May of 1973.  Everyone looks very happy about it in the pictures, except me.

I admit that I may have embellished this story a bit from the original version my adoptive mother likes to tell.  However, the basic story is the same and the embellishments are all the things she left unsaid that I heard in my head each time the story was told.  All of my friends had stories that involved the number of hours of labor their mothers endured, sometimes a harrowing trip to the hospital, some amusing pregnancy related anecdotes, an exact time they were born, and their weight at birth.

By contrast the story of my beginning, which suspiciously started when I was 3 1/2 months old, began with a note in a mailbox asking if my parents were still interested, a payment of a trivial amount of money (for which my mother was very proud, and still is), and taking possession at some point later.  It sounded very much like a story about buying a used car, perhaps not the exact model you were looking for, but for the right price, and close enough to settle for.  In a way I suppose that is exactly what happened.  They couldn't get the new car they wanted (a biological child of their own), so they settled for a value priced one that was available, only slightly used, and had most of the features they were looking for (healthy, male, white-just not the same blood or DNA).

Of course when I was a kid I didn't think of this story in this way, I just knew it made me uncomfortable and somehow made me feel like I was less valuable than people who knew their actual birth story.  When I was older and able to really think about it, this is how I worked out what it all meant.  My adoptive mother still insists on telling it when she gets the opportunity, and that is exactly how it makes me feel, like a bargain priced used car that was almost what my adoptive parents were looking for.
 

Can I be homesick for a place I've never lived?

I think the short answer to that question is yes.  But, this is me, so of course there is a long answer.  I don't know where I would be without long answers, probably the horoscope section of the Bucksaver.

I've been homesick before, for places, for people.  I've lived in a number of different places over the course of my adult life; three different states and a total of five distinct areas.  Where I am now is by far the place I like the least.  Even before the reunion with my natural family happened I wanted to leave this place.  However, it wasn't a constant feeling, and before the reunion I had started to warm, ever so slightly, to the idea of staying here long term.  Primarily that was because I finally had a job I enjoyed almost as much as I enjoyed law enforcement when I was younger.  I wasn't sure it was something I wanted to do (stay here), but I was at least willing to consider it.

Then November 30th came and along with it the phone call that changed everything.  This feeling started that day, though it was small and unfocused.  I didn't yet have a location or any direct contact with anyone.  I didn't even have a letter, just some rough information passed along through a third party, but even so it started to form then.  As time passed and relationships began to form it got stronger.  I learned the place, and it was a place I had some passing knowledge of.  A place not so far from where I spent a decade of my life.  The feeling got stronger as each day passed.

The feeling was easy enough to identify, I'd felt it before.  It was (and is, it is with me constantly) homesickness.  I have never had a home with my mom and my siblings but I miss it as keenly as if I had and have since been forced to leave it.  There is a constant churning feeling in my stomach, the feeling that something is "wrong".  My emotions are always close to the surface, I get angry easily and at things that never would have made me angry in the past.  Sadness comes just as easily and often.  I expected this feeling to have subsided by now, six months into the reunion, but it has only gotten worse.  Evey day that churning in my stomach gets a little stronger, every day I find it a little harder to think about anything else.  Every spare moment I have I spend thinking about my newfound family.  Then I feel that pull in the pit of my stomach again, the cycle repeats.

I don't know that I have the words to adequately explain this.  I feel like I had the weight of 43 years of missed birthdays, holidays, births, deaths, emergencies, and all life's other events are stacked up on my stomach.  Every day I spend living 1000 miles away the weight of another day is added to the pile on my stomach.  How long it will take that weight to crush me is anyone's guess.

There was a time when I was younger that I would have simply packed all my worldly possessions into my car and, in the wold of one of my favorite authors, "lit out for the territories".  I'd have done it months ago in fact.  However, being older if not wiser and with a lot more responsibility, I cannot do that.  So instead I write this blog and wonder how I will ever make it as long as I have to make it out here, however long that turns out to be. 

So, I am homesick for a home I never had and a family I never lived with.  They are a family I missed 43 years with and every day I spend here is another day tacked onto my sentence.  That sentence was handed down in court back in 1974 in the form of a order of final adoption that sealed my records and forever denied me access to my real identity. 

The Sanctioned Lie

I've always been a person that valued truth, reality, and accuracy.  It is, therefore, the height of irony that I have been forced to live a lie my entire life.  Any number of other words can be used to describe my altered identity, but the bottom line under any flowery language one chooses to use is that my birth certificate and accompanying documentation is a court sanctioned government approved lie.

So how is it false?  Well, without the document sitting in front of me I can't be sure of all the inaccuracies, so I will list only those I am sure of: It lists a City in which I was not born as my city of birth.  It lists a County in which I was not born as my county of birth.  It lists a woman who did not carry me or give birth to me as my mother.  It lists a man who did not father me as my father.  It lists my name different than that of my birth.

I didn't think a lot about being adopted over the years, it was something that was a part of me and I didn't give it much consideration.  I know that probably seems hard to believe now, given my apparent obsession with it, but at the time I had locked the feelings I had away and refused to acknowledge they existed, let alone deal with them.  However, I did think about being adopted every time I filled out a background check form for a new job (a common occurrence for someone in law enforcement) or a 4473 to purchase a firearm.  The reason I thought about it was because I knew that when I listed my place of birth I was listing a lie.  It was however a government approved lie.  So, I was expected to list it as the truth and be OK with it.  I listed the approved lie because it would have been a lot of trouble to put the true answer and then explain it.  I always felt bad for the lie though and wished I didn't have to participate in the dishonesty forced upon me by the state without my consent.

The lies associated with adoption extend far beyond a single falsified state record.  Somewhere in a sealed file is a birth certificate that was issued at the time of my birth.  It lists my real mother.  I know from locating the record of my birth (not the certificate, just the record that doesn't include names) that my father was listed as "unknown".  My mom told everyone involved at the time who my father was and assured them it was not possible it could be anyone else.  However, in cases of adoption it is much easier to facilitate if the father of the child is unknown.  A known father has rights and might assert them.  An unknown father can't show up and claim his child, thwarting the adoption.  In the case of my "father" they needn't have worried, he had no interest in being a father then and has none now.  My original birth certificate lists two names (or I assume it does, I will likely never get to see it).  My mom's name and my name.  My mom and I are in contact and building a fantastic relationship.  However if we went together and asked to see the sealed file the powers that be wouldn't show it to us.  There is no one to protect, all the parties listed are known to each other. It doesn't matter, the process must remain secret so the adoption industry can continue its dishonest trade.  Adopted people will continue to be denied the rights of every other person born in the US, that is a right to their original birth certificate.  So much for equal protection.

Government sponsored paperwork falsehoods are not where the insanity ends however.  When I was placed for adoption my ties to my mom were legally severed.  When my adoptive parents adopted me a legal bond was created, birth certificates were altered, and I was "titled" in their names "as if born to".  That really is what it is like, the ownership was passed along much like a car.  I had as much say in the matter as a Buick and apparently title paperwork as well.  However, it is the legal severing of ties that is important.  Any idiot can tell you that a child born to a woman that also bore me is my brother or sister.  However in the convoluted world of legally sanctioned lies my mom is not my mom and my brothers and sisters are not my brothers and sisters.  The law says so.  Instead, two people with whom I share no blood (and have nothing in common with) hold title to me and ten people who I share blood with, one of whom gave birth to me and four of the others, are not legally related to me at all. There is no question we are related unless you are the state or the courts, then we are nothing at all to each other.  It is pure insanity.

Today is the first anniversary of my brother-in-law's death.  Unfortunately I never got to meet him and I wasn't there to offer what little comfort I could to my sister, niece, and nephew when he died.  I was denied the opportunity to know the man, who was by all accounts a great husband and father and all around good guy.  I was denied the opportunity to be there for my family and grieve with them upon his passing.  I was denied these things because I was denied the right to know who I was.  I was given falsified papers instead.  I knew them to be false, but there was no ability for me under the laws of the state where I was adopted to ever see or get copies of the true and accurate records.

How many important life events do adoptees have to miss, both good and bad before they are treated like every other citizen of the United States?  Why are they denied knowing who they really are?  The "privacy" politicians claim such laws protect doesn't exist and could never be promised to anyone at the time they relinquish a child.

I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you dear sister, if only I had known...     

  

If this is supportive, I'd hate to see them working against me...

I really didn't start this with the intention of it being a place for me to post angry rants or complaints about people or my situation.  However, the last week or so a lot of this stuff has risen to the surface and I have needed to get it out.  Luckily I am probably really only writing this to myself and the couple of people I have told about this blog.

So, the second day of the parental visit came to an end yesterday.  They went home this morning, but I had to work, so I didn't see them.  I made a pretty big mistake yesterday, I took them at their word that they were supportive of my contact with my mom and family. 

My mom made me a photo album with pictures that go back to her great grandparents and up through the present day.  It is a great album, I've spent a lot of time looking at it.  With my parents being so "supportive" I thought they might like to see it, so I offered to show it to them.  Well, that was a mistake.

My father flat out refused to look at it.  After the years I spent being subjected to his slide shows it would be nice to think he could spare ten minutes to look at a photo album with his son.  Especially since the photo album is a record of one of the most important events in his son's life.  Nope, apparently not.  That would be expecting too much.  I would do it for one of my kids, even if it made me uncomfortable, because it is clearly important.  My father would rather demonstrate to me again that my feelings are not important to him.

My mother looked at it with me, but she showed very little interest.  Every once in a while she asked a question, but not nearly as many as I expected.  Near the end of the album there is a picture of my mom, one of my brothers when he was a toddler, and a dog.  She got really interested in that picture and started asking me all about the dog.  Never mind that my brother was a toddler in the picture making the picture at least 22 years old.  She expected me to have all sorts of details about a dog that couldn't possibly still be alive.  OK mom, message received.  You always cared more about the dogs than me when I was growing up, and now you care more about a dog in a picture than you do about my story about the people in the pictures that have made a huge impact on my life.  I get it, dogs, even dogs you don't know, are more important than I am.

So, all that was bad enough.  Then, when I was just about done showing my mother the photo album my father asks to see a picture of my siblings.  My mother tells him she showed him a picture of my siblings (I emailed her one with me in it along with the four of them when I got home).  He says he "doesn't remember that".  Really, it was less than three weeks ago.  How do you not remember?  So, I show him a different picture that is in the album.  He looks for a few seconds then says "I don't see much resemblance to you".  Seriously?  Now he is just making things up to suit the narrative he has going in his head.  I can almost hear it, it goes something like "lalalalalalalalalalala I'm not listening".  He actually had the nerve to ask me if I planned to see my mom and siblings again.  I was just about speechless.  In what sort of world is that is reasonable question.  He knows we met.  He knows we got along.  He knows I had a good time and I liked everyone.  Why wouldn't I see them again?  The fact that he even asked me that tells me he doesn't know anything about me at all.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised no matter how supportive they claimed to be.  They are not supportive and never have been.  I won't claim that they have never supported me in anything, but what sticks in my mind are all the times I was told I couldn't do something or I wasn't good enough or I could do better or I could work harder.  If someone told me I did a good job in there every once in a while I don't remember it now.  I have always been, in their minds, a reflection on them.  Apparently, as much as I was told I wasn't good enough, I was a pretty poor reflection.  It has always been about them and how they feel.  I never should have expected them to be supportive of me in something that made me feel good and at the same time might make someone out there question their ability as parents.  After all, what adopted child, even as an adult, would care about his natural family unless his "real parents" were failures? 

The fact that none of this has anything to do with them has never crossed their minds.  I'm involved, so I am a reflection on them.  I'm doing something they don't understand, so they won't support me no matter what they say.  Instead they will do their best to make me feel bad about it while claiming to be excited for me.  Another reminder that it has always been about them and never about me.

Visit from the Adoptive Parents

So my parents are here for a visit.  Since both of them are here this time the visit will be shorter and they are staying in a hotel.  When it is just my mother she tends to stay longer and with us.  That can cause some tension in the house so the visit from both of them is much preferred.  Plus that means I get to see my father, who's company I actually enjoy.  My mother has finally succeeded in taking him into phased death, ah I mean retirement.  So, he will be fully retired in three years and probably fully dead in three years and six months, give or take.  He lives for his work, without that I don't think he is going to have anything to live for.  One would think my mother, who has been married to him for 45 years, would be able to figure this out.  However, she seems to be totally clueless on that score.  I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am.

I've never felt like I was in the right box with them, always that round peg trying to fit in the square hole.  However, over the last six months it has either gotten worse or my ability to notice the "wrongness" has sharpened.  Perhaps finding the right people causes the wrong people to be highlighted in their wrongness that much more.  I wish I didn't feel the way I do.  I know they mean well, even my mother with all her faults means well even if she is really terrible at the execution most of the time.  I can't create something that isn't there though, as much as I might wish it were.  So, I go through the motions just like I have most of my life.  I fake it because it is what is expected of me from them, from society as a whole.  Why not?  My whole life is a lie anyway, one sanctioned by the courts, but a lie all the same.  Apparently I'm expected to be grateful for being "chosen" or "given a home" or "rescued" or "given a better life" or whatever other crap we shovel on the alter of adoption.  Society seems to think I should feel lucky.  Yes, I seem very lucky don't I?  Presumably I should feel lucky because I was "special" because I was "chosen".  Yes, fantastic.  I was "chosen" by two people who couldn't have children of their own after they tried and failed to have them.  They wanted to fill that gap, they did not want me specifically.  I was available.  If I had not been available and some other baby was, that baby would have been "chosen" instead.  What made me special?  I was so special that my father and grandmother wanted nothing to do with me?  I was a problem, not a person, a son, or a grandson.  They made it nearly impossible for my mother to keep me and pressured her into "choosing" to give me up to my "better life" playing second fiddle to poodles.  That does sound pretty "special", I really am lucky.  What no one towing the party line on adoption ever says, though it is the elephant in the room, is that the reason I (or any other baby) was available to be "chosen" was that I was abandoned by people who were supposed to love and protect me.

So, another weekend of living the lie I am so accustomed to living.  I really just want to get away from here.  I hate the his place.  I need to be close to my real family, the people I fit in with.  I've already missed 43 years of that life, the life that isn't a lie sponsored by the courts and accepted by the society that labels me as "lucky" and expects me to be "grateful".     

Adopted - Full Movie

My "Father"

So, I suppose I am not enough of a glutton for punishment.  About two weeks ago I sent a letter to my biological “father”.  I’ve known who he is since I first started direct contact with my mom; it was one of the first things we talked about.  Once I had his name and approximate age he was easy to find since he is still living in the same town he was in back in 1972.  Originally I planned not to contact him, but as time went on and my relationship with my mom and family grew I decided I would probably regret it later if I didn’t give the guy a chance.  So, I sent the letter.

Mom and I talked at length about him and I told her before I sent the letter that I was thinking about it.  We talked about him again then, and whether or not sending him a letter was the right thing to do.  In the end I decided to do it.  I was not expecting a lot based on what she told me about him.  He treated her like crap back in 1972, lied to her, tricked her, and even pretended that they were going to get married (and that was before she was pregnant).  When he found out she was pregnant he was not supportive at all and was in favor of her giving me up for adoption.  He had been married previously and had a child with his ex-wife, but when they divorced he signed his parental rights to that child away.  The guy was a real winner.  In my experience people don’t change.  There are exceptions every once in a while, the ones that prove the rule, but generally people stay the same.  So, I was not hopeful, but in 43 years anything is possible.  I put the ball in his court.

Well, two weeks later and nothing.  I’m not surprised; I didn’t have a lot of hopes or dreams riding on this guy having seen the light.  It would be nice if he had, but it was not expected.  Mom and I talked about him again and the letter I sent and she asked me if I minded if she called him.  I didn’t mind at all so she did.  Well, he got the letter, so at least we know he hasn’t become the best guy in the world over the last four decades and the postal service just lost the letter.  He didn’t say one way or the other if he was going to answer it, but she didn’t think he would based on his attitude.  He claimed to just be a “regular guy” and said he didn’t really have anything to tell me about his life.  He didn’t so much as apologize for how he treated her in 1972; he just blamed everything he did on PTSD from his experiences in the Vietnam War.  I certainly don’t discount the effects of PTSD, I have some experience there myself, but it’s not a blanket excuse to treat people like crap.

So, I don’t expect to hear from him.  Based on what he said, and didn’t say to my mom, I think that is probably for the best.  Now I won’t have to wonder if I made a mistake not giving him a chance and I won’t have to deal with him as it doesn’t appear he is going to take the chance I offered.  I guess that makes it a “win-win”.  Well, except that I get rejected by my “father” again. 

The man that should have been my father found several letters to the editor that my actual “father” wrote to his local paper in the last couple of years.  Let’s just say that the man has an interesting take on the geopolitical situation that does not appear to be based on either research or firsthand experience.  For that matter it doesn’t appear to be based on reality.  It’s really too bad he doesn’t use a computer (information he reported to my mom in their phone conversation) because he would be great at manufacturing memes for Facebook that contain no actual facts at all but still generate fierce debates between two equally ignorant sides.  He really has missed his calling, letters to the editor are so 1994, almost no one reads the actual paper anymore.

This hero among men didn’t have any more children after me (that he knows of) although he is married (to an obviously very lucky woman).  So, I have no additional siblings out there so far as can be determined.  His daughter would probably be 45 or 46 now, but we don’t have any information on her so it would likely be very difficult to track her down.  Given his obvious love of his children I am sure he would be of no help even if we were in contact.  There is always the Ancestry.Com DNA database.  I may look into that someday if I ever have a job where I make anything like real money. 

So yeah, the “father” appears to still be the same jerk he always was, but at least I know.