Dear Adoptive Parents Who Feel Over Their Heads

I read a plea recently on Twitter by an adoptee asking adoptive parents to say something positive about their (adopted) children.

Do you wonder why I wrote (adopted)? I didn’t put that word in at first: at first the sentence read “I read a plea recently on Twitter by an adoptee asking adoptive parents to say something positive about their children.”

Why would I need to put in (adopted)?

I believed I needed to insert it to make it clear that I wasn’t talking about their biological children. You know, their children. 

I hesitated to put (adopted) in because I, for one, don’t like to use it when talking about my parents. Even now I feel that, to be perfectly clear, I should write “(adopted) parents.”

BUT I DON’T WANT TO.

 If my parents are my (adoptive) parents and the people who created me are my (biological) parents, I don’t have what is considered normal for a person in this world: parents. 

This makes me so upset in a quiet, what can I fuck up kind of way. It makes me sick, uneasy, my guts feeling as if boat ride is about to get bad, rocky, unsteady, dangerous. 

It makes me hate you a little bit. All of you.

When a person is drowning, good manners fly out the window. I’ll grab you by the hair if I think it will keep me from dying. 

When you bring a child into your house that used to have other parents and change that child’s name, call that child yours, teach them your habits, your beliefs, your family’s history, you are both saving and killing that child.

As that child, I can tell you I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and love and hate and pride and excitement and shame and sadness when it comes to my (say it!) (NO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! THEY ARE STILL MINE!) parents. 

When I was a child, I loved being adopted. I liked announcing it, seeing how it made me special, unknown, different. Those very things would feel crippling decades later as I found they kept me from being able to connect with other people in ways that felt safe. I was special, unknown, different. 

Fuck. 

I so get why adoptees set fires, kill people, hurt themselves, lie, cheat, steal, die. 

Being special, unknown, different can be like having a fist down your throat while you are trying to eat a nice meal. 

My parents tried so hard. 

I can make myself sob thinking about the love they gave me, and the love I both gave them and kept from them. We were in a play: we’ll be your parents and you’ll be our child, only we’ll pretend this is for real. We’ll never say this is just a play. You’ll feel your life will depend on how well you play along. You’ll also feel you’ll die if you play along. 

Dear Adoptive Parents Who Feel Over Their Heads,

 You are. (I learned in high school economics that Milton Friedman said there’s no such thing as a free lunch.)

And so are we, your (SAY IT) (NO—I JUST CAN’T) children.

But if I don’t say it, a lie exist.

And so are we, your (adopted) children. We are also over our heads. You are over yours; we our over ours. This is the family of adoption.

It’s so painful, living with parenthesis.

What do you want to say about us in parenthesis? (I’m listening. I want to know.) I’m guessing that what is in my head, what I think you’re saying, is even worse than what you are actually saying (in secret).

(I am sorry, Mom and Dad. I wish I could have been better. I wish I had been perfect. Beyond reproach.)