Surviving Oz.

Why "Surviving Oz"?

I struggled for a long time to find a name for this blog that seemed to "fit". I decided upon the name "Surviving Oz" for my blog as a kind of tribute and juxtaposition to the movie Wizard of Oz. As an adoptee, I often felt like I was out of place and at odds between the life that I was abruptly placed into and the life that I could have had.

"Surviving Oz" reflects, for me, the struggle of being trapped between two worlds, my adoptive world and my birthfamily world. Maybe it seems silly, but it just feels right.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

On "Sharing"

Hmm, it's been awhile dear blog of mine. Lots of things have been happening recently, most of them revolving around issues that are fairly unique to Adoptees.

I do not have contact (willingly) with my adoptive parents any longer, which I have mentioned in the past. That does not, however, keep them from randomly contacting me; an incident that happened recently on my "Adoption Day". Had they not let me the flowers and note, I would not have even remembered that there had ever been anything special about that day in the past. My adoption, and whole identity that is connected to adoption, is a part of me that I deal with yet try to give as little time to as possible. I am currently already having to wade through reconnecting with birth relatives and all of the emotional toll that brings, so when I received these inappropriately-left flowers and note, I couldn't help but be a bit disgusted. While most adult children would love to get hand-delivered flowers from their parents, my situation is not common to those people. I have made it abundantly clear that I want nothing to do with either adoptive parent until I am ready to have a relationship with them. Unfortunately, that is "unacceptable" in their minds, and therefore they must continue to barrage me with texts, letters, etc to show how poorly I make decisions about my life.

I digress.

In this poorly worded "Why are you doing this to us (you self-centered brat)" letter, my adoptive mother also made sure to mention that she will soon be profiting off of sharing my adoption story with others. I must have read that paragraph eight times before it finally sunk in; just when I thought I could take my life back, she finds a way to warp it and make it hers again. She couldn't write about anything specific to HER, she has to write about MY adoption experiences and my birth relatives; Lord only knows what lies she told, seeing as we aren't exactly the poster children of a Nuclear Family.

Being adopted, my life already never has felt like my own. I've always known in the back of my mind that "things could be different." If my birth family hadn't given me up for adoption, I would be in a different place right now. Starting 10 minutes after I was born, my life took a sharp turn away from all of my expectations and has just continued doing so. I was inferred to being an "outsider" from my adoptive family because I was not biologically related to them, and I am definitely an outside in my birthfamily because I did not grow up knowing all of them.

So, when I saw that she was writing MY story, I started to get angry. I want to take it back, write it the way it happened, without the rose-petal scenery, and rainbow farts. That's when I remembered this blog and the whole reason that I started it in the first place.

I guess if I want to make my voice be heard, I better start talking.