Identity and estrangement.

First, I should acknowledge that it's been almost 2 1/2 years since I last posted here. I guess part of me wasn't sure where I wanted to go with this blog, and decided to put it on the back burner until I figured it out. Well, I can't promise to have figured it out, but I am starting to have some more fully-formed thoughts that I want to talk about, so I thought I'd give it another go. We'll see what happens... I hate coming up with usernames. I never know what "thing" I want to pick to represent me online, and most of my ideas are boring or dumb. Somehow that got me started on how many different name identities I've had, or almost had, in my life. I was born "Baby Girl (lastname)"; then called "Hope" in my foster home (spoilers: my pseudonym when I was a kid was 'Hope (lastname)'); several years ago my birthdad told me that he would have named me Amanda, so I would have been Amanda (M). That lead me to another thought. I have always felt I have several fractured identities kind of bumping up against each other inside my head. There was no real rhyme or reason for my behavior, and there was no real collective-ness between each part. I was raised in a fairly tumultuous environment, and have since ceased contact with wide swaths of my adoptive family. I do feel strongly that being put up for adoption made my brain at higher risk for detaching these different selves and keeping them from becoming one, unified, sense of self. That, alone, I don't believe was enough. Eventually, I think my brain would have meshed them all together. However, my childhood was frought with traumatic estrangement, some violence, and a lot of emotional abuse and manipulation. Not an environment conducive to encouraging a stable sense of self. When I estranged from my parents (and, as a result, was estranged from by much of my extended family), I started trying to take a look at these fragments that were just kind of floating around. I discovered that a lot of the anguish and angst that may have kept me from a cohesive world experience, was this pervasive theme of estrangement and loss. I was estranged from my birthmother, whom I lived inside for 9 months, almost immediately after birth. I was estranged from my adoptive brother due to escalating violent behavior that my parents finally could no longer control. I don't remember much of my life before my brother was given back to the state, but I get this distinct impression that nothing was ever really the same again. The loss and impact was just too much in my family. Pictures were hidden away, and I was expressly forbidden (at the age of 5) to talk about ever having had a brother. It's just another kind of disruption of collectiveness in experiences. This horrible thing just happened, and I was taught by the adults in my life that we were to treat it as if it hadn't. My only real recourse was to shut off that part of me that knew it had happened, and pretend that part didn't exist. Close myself off from it. Since it was an affective coping mechanism that I had already started to develop, I continued to use it for most of the rest of my childhood. What it left me with is this kind of ocean of voices with no real rhyme or reason that I am now trying to wade through and gather back up again. I remember I grew up thinking that being adopted "wasn't really a big deal" for me. It was just something I was. I'm starting to realize that I had created defense mechanism around adoption, because I was too terrified to take a good look at how adoption, and subsequent abuse/neglect, has truly impacted my life. The brain is a funny thing, for sure.

On Mourning.

I've recently been struggling with something that I never really acknowledged before: Grief. Grief in the fact that I have this one, in-tact, healthy, happy family who will, either for me fault or theirs, not fully accept me into the life they banished me from so many years ago. Grief in the fact that I have another family with whom I have banished, for their mistreatment, abuse, and unyielding selfishness throughout my life.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how my birthfather told me that he would have named me Amanda. I find myself thinking about her a lot. What would she have been like? What would her favorite movie have been? Would she love kids movies? What would her life have been like?

I won't ever know, and that plays a huge part in why I'm grieving. I try not to have a romanticized view of what my life would have been like, but I spent most of my childhood in abusive situations... it's hard to imagine that any other life would have been like that. But there would have been other heartbreaks that would have shaped me in completely different ways. My parents weren't together and, from the looks of it, would have never gotten along. That would have been its own stress.

I don't know. I don't have any answers and I know I never will. I just wish I'd stop finding more questions. I feel like I'm drowning in questions that no one will ever answer.

If People Stopped to Think About What They Were Saying, We'd Have A Lot More Silence.

Adoption has been on my mind recently, but I haven't been able to put words to my thoughts. I've been stuck in this thought pattern about how derogatory and invalidating people are in their everyday lives about adoptees and members of the adoption triad. Think about how many times you've heard siblings arguing until one of them snipes,"Yeah, well you were adopted!" as if it's the most disgraceful thing in the world. I heard that ad nauseum between siblings when I'd go over to friends' houses. Ouch.

Then you find out your friend wants to adopt. Immediately, they are showered with "Wishing you the best of luck!", "You'll be parents in no time," etc etc. Nevermind that the subject to that is, "I'm hoping that a child is given up because of poverty, lack of resources, or age of parents soon so that you can feel fulfilled as people. Nevermind that the birthmother/father may be making the most heart-wrenching decision of their lives. I pray that happens quickly because I care about you and don't consider the social implications of the adoption system at all!"

Not to mention the child, who has most likely just been taken from the only family they've known for 10 months in utero. But that's okay! You can just take home your bundle of joy, and it'll be like nothing ever happened.

Adoption is pretty much always about the adoptive parents. If they really wanted to "give a child a better life" then why not sponsor a child from a poor family?

Recently, an acquaintance decide sie wants to adopt. Since then, friends and family have been reposting her website all over the place."If you know of any families looking to adopt out their children, let us know!"

How can people not see how fucked up the whole thing is?!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

The Facade of Family.

Family is supposed to be one of those inalienable rights. Everyone should have a loving, doting family or at least one that is concerned for your actual well-being.

Whoever came up with that societal rule, should have made it a point to add the exception: adoption. As an adoptee, not only did adoptees natural family think that their lives would be better off without the adoptee, but you're always a guest in your adoptive family. People will make comments, or treat you differently, or maybe just flat out ban you from family functions. Then, when you eventually find your natural family, they either: want nothing to do with you (which, if you gave it any thought, makes a lot of sense since they didn't give a shit about you when you were a helpless baby), or pretend to care about and want to know you and then just completely drop you after they realize that you're not the daughter they've always wanted. You're difficult to know, guarded, and somewhat detached. They have the privilege of just assuming that you're difficult to be difficult, since they got you out of their hair as fast as possible and can make up any story they want to explain away your behavior. After all, it's easier to just blame you for everything than to ever consider that they fed you to the wolves when you were an infant because it was easier on them. Thank God they didn't have you to worry about and could go on to have a happy, well-adjusted family. How dare you come into the picture with your dysfunction and abuse history and try to ruin their picture-perfect family.


Do I sound bitter? Good, then I've made myself painfully clear.

Who is "Amanda"?

I finally decided upon what name to associate with this adoption journal: Amanda M.

Since I have some time, I thought I would take a moment to explain why I choose that name.

During a conversation with my birthfather a few months back, he randomly told me that, were he to have named me, he would have named me "Amanda". It was one of those comments that he probably thought nothing about, but meant a lot to me. While I don't plan on changing my legal name to "Amanda", I wanted to have some representation of the identity I could have had and thought what better way to do that than to use the name on my adoption blog. The "M", of course, stands for his last name. I've thought, on more than one occasion, about changing my surname to reflect his and to also better reflect my heritage, but I'm still not sure if I want to do that or not. I've known of some adoptees who do end up changing their first or last name (or both) in honor of their birth families, but I just haven't decided what is right for me yet.

In the meantime, I thought using the name in association to this blog would be a good starting point, while also helping to keep up the air of anonymity to anyone who I may know in real life who stumbles upon this blog. It's a way for me to reclaim part of my identity that was lost when I was adopted and I'm so glad that he shared it with me.

The Unwanted Child.

I just heard, yet again, how not all people who take in an "unwanted child" are bad people. Now, I have a question for everyone: If an "oops" child is brought into the world, what are the chances of anyone saying to them, "Well, your parents didn't really want you, but they got you and you should be grateful for them for keeping you." Unless that child was around really fucked up people, probably no one's ever said that to them.

So then why is it okay to tell adopted children that, well yeah, some adoptive parents are shitty, but most of them just want to give a home to a child that was otherwise unwanted? How did you suddenly become the all-knowing medium about why any child is given up for adoption? What about children conceived in poverty? Or children conceived by parents who were minors at the time (thus giving the child's grandparents legal authority over whether they are to be placed in foster care or not.

When did telling a child they were "unwanted" become acceptable in our society? Has anyone stopped to think about how incredibly fucked up that could make a child? Why can't we tell them that adoptive parents are, theoretically, more "well-equipped" or "capable" of raising a child? Can't we respect the child, the birthparents, AND the adoptive parents all at the same time? Why must people feel the need to shit all over the birthparents in order to convince the adopted child that adoptive parents should be commended?

I read somewhere once about how adoptive parents should want the best for their adoptive child. That they need to be able to accept, in the perfect world they wished their child could have been born into, that they would have never been their parent if something hadn't gone wrong. And "gone wrong" shouldn't just automatically mean "no one else wanted you."


ETA: Here is something that I just found from a fellow adoptee friend of mine:

It's food for thought, yes?

On Attachment.

Growing up, my adoptive parents would tell me I had "attachment issues". I didn't attach the way most kid were supposed to attach. Over the years, I've become more and more confident to say that they were full of shit. It's not attachment that I have a problem with; it's abuse. I don't tolerate systematic abuse from anyone. Ever. Those that are abusive try to turn that around on me as being "unattached".

Don't get me wrong, I don't attach to people easily. I have a labyrinth of walls up that people unknowingly must weave through before I fully trust them. I analyze their boundaries, interactions, and management of the world around them. However, once I become attached, it's forever.

That sounds a little ominous, so let me explain. I rarely tell people "I love you" because, to me, that's not something you should throw around lightly. To me, "I love you" means "this is unconditional. Nothing I could imagine you doing will ever make me not love you. You will never be a burden. Even if we were to never talk again, I would always hope you were okay. I'd always be here if you needed me."

That's a lot of power behind three words, which is why I don't say them lightly. But my ability to have such strong feelings towards not only those three words, but towards the people I say them to, shows that I'm not only capable of attachment but the attachments that I make are life-long. I've learned to be wary of anyone who tries to tell me differently.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7