Still Working on the Sequel to You Don't Look Adopted

Self-Talk

When I think of the movie Wings of Desire, I think of the angel sitting on the subway, hearing the self-talk of those around him. What if adoptees had a megaphone for their self-talk? Maybe the self-talk of adopted people is generally the same as those who weren’t adopted, but I have the brain of the former and not the latter, so I have no idea. What I do know is that if I were any meaner to myself, I’d be cut up lying in a ditch somewhere. Recently I heard an adoptee say that she never looked in a mirror and saw herself as beautiful, and this stopped me short because…what a waste! She has a fine face, a, dare I say it, beautiful face, and it will die with her and she will never know she was what she was: perfect. 

This kills me.

Because I get it.

Etch-A-Sketch

I’ve often fantasized and written about wishing I could clear the Etch-A-Sketch of me, like I was a blackboard covered in chalk marks. I want a fresh start. I want to be a blank slate for real this time. I want to clear my being of stories and thoughts so I can take a deep breath, look around, and intentionally write myself into existence.

Holy Shit

It’s that whole be careful what you wish for thing. I realized the reason I haven’t been writing is because in some ways I did clear the Etch-A-Sketch of me by writing You Don’t Look Adopted and by blogging and posting all those thoughts about being adopted on my blog and Facebook and Instagram for the last six years. I took the words from inside my body and put them out into the world, and then I did MDMA and psylocibin and whoosh, my brain was changed, and I had no idea who I was or what I had to say, and so I decided to be quiet(er).

Screwed

It wouldn’t surprise me if research was done to babies separated from their mother at birth (or later), and if the results of the discovery showed that an energetic screw was drilled as a response of the separation from the crown of the baby’s head down to its pelvic floor. A tight screw of distress. I feel a leakage of sadness and despair from my core particularly in the mornings when I’m contemplating getting out of bed and then later in the afternoon when I’m beginning to get tired. This core energy can take me down. It can make me feel hopeless, helpless, and unlovable. I have to monitor myself and work to have the elements of my life support more than deplete me. I pay attention to things such as my sleep, food intake, caffeine intake, workload, time with others, outdoor time, exercise, self-talk, the energetic quality of those I am with, the shows I watch, the books I read, the podcasts and music I listen to, how well I listen to others. Most of my time is spent trying to regulate myself so I don’t come into close contact with the screw of distress and crash the plane that is me.

The screw of distress immobilizes me when it’s in control. I can’t focus. I can’t find it in me to care about the things I need to do. This is when jobs, relationships, plans, and promises are all in jeopardy because I’ve gone still or dead inside, and it’s taking all my energy to keep up the pattern of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale so the screw of distress doesn’t paint my world black and invite me to face the fact that I am unworthy of love and attention.

Take it From the Top

I came to Westwood because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived.

Thanks, Thoreau.

I also came to my hometown of Westwood, Massachusetts, because I wanted to grow up. While living at Spirit Hill Farm in California, I had started working with the Harvard women’s basketball coach on her memoir-leadership book. She’d been the gym teacher at my high school and the coach of my best friend both as a player at Westwood and at Harvard. I took on the project because I thought Kathy should have a book about her life and career after all she’d done fighting for gender equity. Her career spanned the first fifty years of Title Nine, and Kathy fought every inch of the way for the rights of her players. As a woman, I felt it was my duty to help Kathy’s story become more publicly part of history.

My best friend was a great student-athlete, and her focus, drive, and talent separated us when she left for Harvard and I began attending and leaving a series of colleges. One of us was doing great and one of us wasn’t. It’s that whole birds of a feather thing—there was less for us to connect on while one of us was performing and getting accolades and the other was driving cross country yet again with a hand and cigarette dangling out the window. Coming back to my hometown and working with Kathy was a way for me to have a do-over, to go back in time and learn things I’d been unable to absorb as a teenager: primarily confidence, discipline, and toughness.

I left Massachusetts when I was 18 because I thought I was different and therefore that I needed to live somewhere different so I could finally be myself. The heartbreak of thinking place is the problem and not your perception of yourself is that you do all this work to get somewhere new and then you sit down, look around, and realize you brought yourself with you and nothing really has changed except maybe you are lonely in an even more profound way because in this new place nobody knows you. Suddenly having your mother and the postman and your 6th grade teacher looking at you as if they know you isn’t so hideous. So you go back and then you remember that, yes, it is that hideous to be seen and to feel unseen, and so you leave again.

2nd Person

So you go back and then you remember is different from So I go back and then I remember. Slipping from 1st person (I) to 2nd person (you) is like looking into your heart to looking into the heart of your neighbor, all while imagining you are actually still talking about yourself. Half the time people don’t even realize they slip into 2nd person when talking about themselves. I listen for the change because often it signals that the stove of self-observation has gotten hot and the person feels they need to get the heck out of the kitchen.

I Survived Anne Heffron

It was the third week in my year-long writing class for adopted people, and a women joked that she had mocked-up a t-shirt earlier that week that said “I Survived Anne Heffron’s Class” only she crossed out the “’s Class”. We all laughed. I said I wanted one of those t-shirts because I had survived me, too.

Later, I realized the point is to not survive the class (or me, I guess), or at least for your false self or your coping mechanisms not to survive the class. I see the class as a carwash that blasts away what is not true so the people can drive away, shining with authenticity.

The problem I keep butting up against personally is that when I am the most authentic, the most true, I often don’t feel shiny. I often feel sticky, dirty, complicated, unlikable, afraid of myself.

I wish I knew what it felt like to not be adopted, so I could realize I’m just like everyone else on the planet and get on with being a human being. Walking to the store full of confidence is so much more fun than crawling there because your heart is hurting over something that happened five decades ago.

Plus your knees don’t get so banged up.