The Fairy-Tale Fuckery of Reunion or You Owe Me, Bitches. Part 1

I have never acted more privileged or entitled than when I approached my birth parents. Sometimes I write “first” parents, for mothers in particular, because I know some people find the term “birth mother” offensive. First of all, it’s reduced to b.m. which also stands for poop, and secondly, it makes the mother sound like a cow, like an animal who gave birth and that was about it to the event. However, the truth is the first mother I have is the mother who claimed me, and that would be my mom. And my dad was the first father to claim me, too.

I have never, I think, called my birth father my “first” father because 1. I never thought about him until I was in my twenties and 2. When I met him, he told me he could not pick my birth mother out of a lineup.

When I decided to contact my birth mother, I had the feeling that she owed me something. I had been afraid to reach out, afraid of rejection, afraid of disturbing her life—what if I had been a secret?—what if her husband did not know about me? (both ended up being true), but when I finally did get myself to the place of believing that, god damn it, she was my mother. She had created me. She owed me a meeting. I hadn’t asked to be born. It was her fault I was here.

Adoptees are told they are lucky and that they should be grateful that they were created, that they were given life, and this is where the great divide happens between those who were adopted and those who weren’t. Neither side understands the other. Adoptees don’t understand the idea of being grateful even when you didn’t get what you wanted (hence the fact that many adoptees live out a tantrum of she should have kept me all their lives), and non-adoptees don't understand the weight of carrying around a brain and body that was created but not wanted.

So I contacted my birth mother with fear (Please, please, please don’t reject me again) and hubris (I am your daughter. You need to answer to me.) and the belief that the need for reunion was greater than the need to be respectful of a person’s privacy.

Reunion means “an instance of two or more people coming together again after a period of separation”, “a social gathering attended by members of a certain group of people who have not seen each other for some time”, and “the act or process of being brought together again as a unified whole”.

I thought meeting my birth mother would help me feel whole. I had a mom, and so I didn’t feel like I was looking for another mother, at least not exactly. I was looking to feel the final click of two Legos snapping together, the sound/feeling that would have come with skin and eye contact, I imagined, the sound that would have signified to my body you have survived the birthing process and now you are home, safe.

I feel as though I’ve walked around my whole life without that click, and have looked for it in all the wrong places (sex, food, shopping, jumping off cliffs). There is no click, I think, like the click signifying you were in my body and now you are out of my body, but we are still one.

Seeing my birth mother’s photograph had given my the whisper of the click. My god! Those are my teeth! My cheekbones! My eyes! I’m not from Mars! Someone really did create me!

But I wanted more. The whole enchilada. The snap of you belong to me, truly, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Home of my home.

My birth mother did not want more. She wanted less. Her kids didn’t know about me. Her husband didn’t know about me. I was part of her past. She had done right by me. She had taken time out of her college education, had gone to another state to hide her condition, and she had given a child, me, life and she had filled out the appropriate paperwork in order to get the child, me, good parents.

Did she know my parents had been rejected by the first agency but had a friend who worked for the second? Probably not. Did my parents know that most of the things the agency had said my mother had as talents “played the recorder” were made up? Probably not. Did either care?

I harassed my birth mother. I found her email address at work and I wrote to her even after she had told me both over the phone and by mail that she wanted no contact. I didn’t care about her wants. I thought she was not being fair. I wanted to know about her children, my half-siblings. My half-siblings. Mine mine mine.

She and I struck up a deal. She would tell me the details of my birth, and I would leave her alone and not contact her kids.

The details she gave me were few and possibly lies. (She wrote she “guessed that what they would say these days is that I was date raped”. My birth father later claimed this was not true—he said I was conceived in passion. I chose to believe him because he had shown up for me and rumor had it he had a couple of other children floating around the world, so either he was a serial rapist or he just never used a condom, and after meeting him, I choose the latter.) But she had given details of my existence to me, and so, until she died, I kept my promise.

And then I went after her kids. I wanted a sister of my own, and there was one out there, with almost my same first name. I wanted her to be mine. I already had brothers, and so while I was excited to meet two who shared my blood, I was most excited to meet someone with whom I could share clothes, maybe, stories of what it was like to live this life as a female in bodies that were connected by DNA.

It’s so easy to stalk people these days.