Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Adoptees - Twice Lost


Adoptees - Twice Lost

I read the “Ask An Adoptee” question about adoptees feeling given away, and finally have my own response to it.  I’m having a tough time with feeling unwanted lately, and lost more than usual.  Dealing with multiple debilitating health issues is hard enough, especially without any family.   It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.  I’ve been down this road before and walked the path of despair and I know the way out.  It’s through coping tools and mechanisms like writing, adoptee support groups, allowing myself to feel emotions and not deny or allow them to come out in some unhealthy manner.  Ok, except for screaming at random objects left on the carpet I trip over, or the cats in my way, or my son’s failure to take out the trash when asked three times. But, I know it’s really not about the tripping, or the cats, or the trash.  It’s about adoption.

I have no real relationship with my adoptive parents and I haven’t for a very long time.  Although we’ve come to the point of not rehashing the abusive past they have apologized to me for, the rejection continues.  The lack of my adoptive parents visiting has been blamed on me living so far away.  But, many families live far apart and see one another when they can.  It’s a five hour drive at most.  It’s Arkansas to Texas for God’s sake not cross country.   There are planes, trains, and automobiles readily available.  There are telephones, and email, and regular mail for communication when travel is not possible.  I know, I am the one who uses them to visit and contact them!

Neither of my biological parents can step out of the veil of secrets and lies that cover up my very existence.   I have had the times and circumstances explained to me over and over.  I get it!  I grew up in “those times” of shame and stigma in unwanted pregnancy and girls sent away.  But, this is not about “back then” it’s about now.  

The truth is it’s a sad, sad, sad, story about two people who gave up their child for adoption and went on with their lives, and adoptive parents who couldn’t bond with these children, and then had a biological child they did and went on with theirs.  But it’s not just about my personal situation with adoption it’s SO much larger than that.  It’s about the system of adoption that failed us all.  We are genetic beings created from our heredity and biology, not generic interchangeable family parts.

The whole truth is that the system of adoption lied, and is continuing to lie, to us and to the rest of the world about the realities of all of this while they continue to profit.  I wonder and think about the brothers and sisters I was told I have out there who don’t know about me, and may never know because of closed adoption records.  I am still on my fourth petition to the adoption courts over the last thirteen years.  My pleas and cries still fall on deaf ears, hearts, and minds.

The final truth for me is that the system of adoption has left me in the dust without either adoptive or biological family.  And that’s a tough life sentence to be given especially when the only crime you seem to have committed was that of being born.