Assembling Self

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Incomplete Adoptees

Trying to figure out who you are growing up is hard enough.  Growing up adopted makes it extremely difficult.  Trying to get information about your biological family AFTER you are grown up as an adoptee can be virtually impossible, or very expensive, or both.  Now, imagine growing up trying to figure out where you fit in and your place in the world when your life is missing the basic information others have and yours instead is based on silence and secrecy.

Children look to their parents faces as mirror images of theirs.  Even if a child does not resemble their parents I can assure you that somewhere in the family be it sibling, or cousin, or grandparent, there is someone they are related to they resemble.  Adoptees are raised away from genetics and biology and therefor, are at huge disadvantage to have the chance to create a healthy and solid foundations to expand upon into adulthood.  I'll compare it to feeling like sliced swiss cheese compared to other people's full wheel of cheddar.  Maybe that's a poor analogy, but I'll always stay true to my Wisconsin upbringing. :)

Adoption erases our biological foundation and transplants us into another family.  Not only are the physical resemblances lacking between adoptees and adoptive parents but so are likes, dislikes, and habits.  I have born witness to numerous adoptees in reunion who found out their biological relatives shared many similar traits such as chain smoking, habitual nail biting, gesturing dramatically with their hands when they speak, the love of either art, music, dance, even down to having the exact same professions and or degrees.  It goes beyond coincidence.  It is heredity plain and simple.

Some adoptees such as myself are adopted into families who are the polar opposites of them.  So, not just physicality differs but personal tendencies, wants, needs, and desires do as well.  You begin to believe that everything about you is wrong.  It has to be for your own parents to give you up to someone else.  And, as an adoptee you do your best to blend in, conform, and fit in.  We find ourselves caught between two worlds.  One of reality that much of the time doesn't make sense to us, and one of fantasy where we try and make sense, or to cope.

We may look o.k. on the outside and you'd probably never know we were any different from anyone else.  Internally though, we are often struggling while analyzing everything and everyone around us, or living in a fog of denial.  Often times I have felt like a chameleon in life.  Changing to fit my surroundings be it with family, work, or socially.  I know people will say "Well, I feel that way too".  And if you do, then I can guarantee being adopted we feel that ten fold...x 10.

"I wish, naturally to prevent the possibility that someone may write an accidental, superficial, incomplete and perhaps untrue picture of me."  ~Conrad Veidt

And that's what adoption does. It allows others to alter and recreate "our" life stories  from the very beginning be it by the industry, or agencies and social workers, or adoptive parents, or society.  It makes adoptees adhere and abide to laws that only apply to them.  Only in adoption are genetics white washed as unimportant.