Loyalties

I was reading a post over on the forum today and something one of our members said really struck a chord with me.

...I wish all the people who've told me how lucky I am to be adopted and how wonderful it is, could have felt the confusion and sickness I felt after all that. I constantly feel, and I am sure all adopees get this, that I'm being dragged from one loyalty to another.

God this is SO TRUE. The loyalty thing! Adoptees are pushed and pulled in different directions all the time by our families, our friends, by complete strangers who think they have the right to dictate our lives to us. And to not even realize what they are doing, while telling us to be grateful for having people such as themselves pushing us around. It's insane-making. On one hand, you have the obvious pro-adoption camp who think that adoptees should "get over" their biological family and be happy/grateful/thankful/glad we have this super duper awesome forever family who so graciously let us sleep under their roof and tossed us some food from time to time. And then you have the seriously anti-adoption nuts who will tell you that your adoptive parents are nothing more than child abductors and any "love" I think I feel for them is simply Stockholm Syndrome and they are only merely fond of me as well. (Yes, I have actually heard those words from someone). And then there's the rest of society - people who are well-meaning usually, maybe they have no real connection with adoption so they don't know what to think, or maybe they know someone who knows someone who is adopted and they feel this way or that, so of course all adoptees should. And last but not least, you have your families, adoptive and, if in reunion/open adoption, your biological families. And I count my friends in here too, because they are close to me and are part of my "inner circle" so to speak. Everyone has an opinion on where my loyalties should lie. EVERYONE. And almost everyone feels they have the right to TELL me where my loyalties lie. What is it about loyalty anyway? I mean, why is it that society has this idea that adoptive parents are like a lover who is being cheated on if the adoptee decides to see where she came from? What's with this notion that because they raised me, I can't form friendships and relationships with people other than them? Oh wait...I can, just not anyone who might share my DNA. Because THAT would be "disloyal." I can call my mother-in-law Mom, but if I called my n-mother Mom? THAT would be a betrayal. And most people have no qualms whatsoever about telling me so, and making me feel like shit in the process. Because my own feelings and needs don't matter, apparently. And then to top it off by telling me how awesome it must be to feel this way. Do people listen to themselves? I don't think so. I don't think they even think about what is about to come out of their mouth most of the time. And damn this is turning into another anti-adoptive parent thing isn't it? LOL no, no, I don't hate my adoptive parents. Nothing could be further from the truth. And if they were alive today? I don't think they'd be the least bit bothered by my reunion and subsequent relationships with my biological family. At least I like to think they wouldn't, because they were pretty awesome people, and never once made me feel like I should be grateful for my adoption. They never used any of the tired old cliche's about adoption, and I'm so thankful for that. And you know, they ARE my parents. I DO feel a loyalty to them. But that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't also have a space for the people who are my family by birth. What is so dangerous, or disloyal, about having more people in my life who love me? Do people tell their friends, they can't make more friends because the old friends will feel betrayed? I've never heard of that happening. But it's kind of par for the course in adopto-land. And it's funny, because when it comes to my biological vs. adoptive siblings, the sentiments don't seem to apply. Nobody thinks my adoptive brothers will feel betrayed if I list my biological brother as such on my FB family list. Nobody tells me I shouldn't talk to him because my brothers were the ones beating me up my entire childhood, not him. Nobody seems to care, they actually think it's pretty cool. But the parents loyalty thing is what's huge. And it's not like I can suddenly go back and be re-raised by my b-mom...it's not like my entire lifetime of memories is going to be wiped clean and I'll forget my a-parents ever existed. Yet people think adoptees must choose one or the other, pick sides, be loyal. I'll tell you what...I'll be loyal to those who show me love and respect and EARN my loyalty. And I - me, myself and I alone, will decide who that its. I don't tell anyone else who they should be loyal to...but for some reason, adoptee loyalty is open season. Sickening.

Mom

(Originally posted at Wordpress on 5/14/08)

I have been meaning to write about this for a while now. Mother's Day has come and gone, and it always leaves me with a mixture of feelings.

May 10, 1997. That was the day my mom died. It was a Friday, 2 days before Mother's Day that year. I remember it well...the cancer had been making quite a steady progress at replacing the skin and tissue of her chest with hard, brown callousy tumor cells. She showed them to me one day, the were growing on the outside too, they were scabby looking. I was spending my nights in the day-bed that we set up in the small living room off the dining room, listening to Nick at Nite play on her television, waiting for the sound of that little bell she would ring if she needed me.

And it rang, too often it rang in those last couple of weeks. The morphine wasn't helping. She didn't know where she was. She wondered if she had died or if she was still alive. All through the night, between episodes of I Love Lucy and the Munsters, the bell would ring, and I would go to her.

And we would hug, and cry, we knew the end was near.

I spent my days doing much the same thing...although I also had my brother to look after, my recently blinded and brain damaged brother, the accident that took his vision and half his brain happened on May 9, 1996, one year before Mom died. Our Dad died in July, about a month after my brother came home, so it was just me, my blind brother, and my dying mother. I was taking care of all of us.

Not the easiest of tasks for a 23 year old, but I was glad to do it. I would do anything for my beautiful mom.

I didn't go to the cemetery after the funeral. I just couldn't do it. Everybody telling me how sorry they are, people I didn't know, didn't remember, or who I knew and had never heard jack shit from my entire life, yeah, they're sorry, well this was the second mom I had lost, and I just couldn't stand another second of it. Not one more second. But it wasn't really me they were sorry for, no, it was my brother. My poor, blind, brain-damaged brother, because everyone knew that HE wasn't adopted, HE was the one who lost his REAL mother, HE lost SO MUCH that day. Even to this day, people ask about poor M...he lost his mom and dad, how is he doing, yet they don't stop to think that I did too. The bastard adopted freak child lost something, too.

Because I did love my a-parents, I love them still. I am sitting here typing this in the very room where my amom drew her last breath. Outside my picture window is where my adad's heart stopped beating on that sunny Thursday in July. This is where I grew up, this is home, this is where my memories lie.

Yet part of me sometimes feels like a big, fat, adoptee traitor. And I know that's silly...but sometimes when I'm out there, fighting the fight, blogging and message-boarding about adoptee rights and about adoption pain, I feel like a traitor in two senses...one, a traitor to my a-parents, and the other, a traitor to the adoptees.

I have learned to separate my loathing for adoption from my love for my adoptive family. I know that it is the separation from my family, and not them, that has caused my pain...and it is my struggles with reunion and my n-mom's issues that cause me pain, not them or anything they ever did.

But on the same note, I feel that I should somehow not love my adoptive family if I am to be any sort of champion for adoptee rights. That having this "good" adoptive family, and these fond memories, somehow makes me traitorous or not worthy to take up the torch for my fellow adoptees. I feel like a poser, like I don't measure up, like I don't belong here.

And I don't know how to tell my n-mom anything about my a-parents without feeling like I am hurting her or making her feel bad in any way...because truth be told, as much as I love my adoptive family, I just would rather have never been adopted. But how could I ever say that without hurting THEM?

This shit is so hard.

So, so incredibly hard. And it makes me feel like an asshole no matter which way I look at it.

Maybe life would be easier if I were back in the fog.