Abandoning Adoptee and Shifting to Trouble
I was thinking the other day how great it is to walk into fear. Thoughts like this are so fun to have because I get to feel like my life could totally change, but I don’t actually have to do anything. I can just lie in bed and think about how much more fun I could be having, and then I can close my eyes and go to sleep.
Only this time I couldn’t sleep. Something was bugging me: on my website, front and center, it says (IT SAID!!!!!), under my name, “Adoptee”.
I PUT THAT THERE.
There were great reasons. One was that I was using the word as a beacon to say to other adopted people, Here I am! You are in the right place! Another reason was because before I hit both 50 and the realization that adoption had affected not nothing in my life but everything, I never would have put “adoptee” anywhere near my name just as I wouldn’t have put “pooper”. I mean, why label myself like that? What did it matter that I was an adoptee?
But then the coming out of the fog thing happened and all I wanted to do for about seven years was run around with a megaphone shouting, “HEY! I’M ADOPTED!!!!! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT DID TO MY BRAIN?? DO YOU WANT TO GO ON A DATE AND WATCH HOW FUCKING FAST THINGS WILL GET WEIRD?”
I made so many friends because it turned out I was not the only person who had woken up and was running around or who wanted to run around or who was terrified to run around but wished they could yelling the same thing through their megaphone. I even led groups where I taught people how to use a megaphone! (IT’S SO EASY!! YOU JUST WRITE YOUR TRUE THOUGHTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS!! BOY OH BOY WOULD SCHOOL HAVE BEEN SO MUCH FUN IF THAT IS WHAT WE’D DONE IN ENGLISH CLASS. COME TO THINK OF IT, LIFE WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE FUN IF I’D DROPPED THE ACT OF Hello, I’m a nice girl. What can I do for you? How are you? What do you need? I’m not really here. I don't really matter, but you sure do. Can I have five dollars?)
Anyway.
It occurred to me that as afraid as I used to be to talk openly about my feelings regarding being adopted, now I was afraid to stop. It was who I had become: an adoptee.
On my gravestone, I don’t want it to say “She was adopted.” I would rather have something that would make me and other people laugh and maybe do a double take. I would rather have, for example, “She was a troublemaker.”
So I went on my website and changed “adoptee” to “troublemaker”. I mean, I’m not dead yet, but what if I get hit by a car today? I want to have the final say in saying who I am.
I’m not a bad person. I don’t want to go out and hurt people. I want the opposite. I want to be a good person. I also want to be real. Causing trouble sounds fun to me. It sounds like, Hey, let’s go into that still pond and cause a ruckus and make waves because our bodies like to move and nature likes to be stirred up. It sounds like, Hey, people might get uncomfortable if you tell them that thing that matters to you with all love and respect in your heart. It sounds like, Hey, not everyone might not like you if you do that.
I can’t wait for spring to get here so I can put my hands in the dirt. Today it’s pouring rain out and cold, and I’m not emotionally or physically attached to putting my hands in freezing cold mud, but I’m taking stock of my social media time, and I’m thinking that trouble makers do stuff: they get their hands dirty, for example, more than they scroll. A friend gave me a nailbrush when I was at Spirit Hill Farm because I needed one. Once you get used to having your hands in the dirt, dirt can become part of who you are, and you need someone to remind you that just because you live alone on a farm, you don’t have to give up all social graces. I used “you” in those sentences, but clearly it was all about “I”.
So what.
Who cares.
I had dirt under my fingernails. I was out there causing all sorts of trouble in the garden, planting stuff, picking stuff, tearing stuff out. A friend helped me from going completely feral.
It was awesome.
It’s time to get dirty.
