I'm a Rock Star, and So Are You

I had a friend who would sometimes call me “Poor thing” when I’d tell him a story where I was suffering in my life. “Oh, you poor thing,” he’d say, and I wouldn’t say anything back, but I’d feel my whole self freeze for a second. Was I really a poor thing? His tone was sweet, and so I wasn’t sure exactly why I hated the times he said it until last night when I was watching Brené Brown on her Atlas of the Heart series. She was talking about empathy, and as she explained what empathy looks like, I realized that “poor thing” was not empathetic. It was judgmental.

And if I didn’t argue with being called Poor thing, then I was compliant in the judgment of myself.

So I’m arguing with it. I’m not a poor thing.

Ever.

Here’s why: because I’m a rock star.

And rock stars are not ever poor things. They are ROCK STARS.

I think all adopted people and all people created and not kept are ROCK STARS and here’s why: we were made the same way music is made: out of feeling and thin air and grit and determination.

The story I have heard is that my birth father and mother met at a party in New York City. She was a student and he was in the Coast Guard on shore getting his ya-ya’s out. I bet there was music playing. A popular song at that time was the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand. Maybe that song started something between them, made the music between two people start.

I like the story that the universe wanted me born so badly it took two strangers and a party to bring me to life. Two strangers created a PERSON? I mean, come on. You can’t tell me life isn’t bizarre.

Anyway. I don’t understand music. it’s phenomenal. One person can play an instrument or sing or do those things with others and my body and mind can want to swoon or dance or cry or laugh or get jiggy with it (yes, I’m 58) or clean the house or go for a drive with the windows down or drink mezcal or write something or make love. Music exists the same way people do whose mother’s didn’t or couldn’t keep them—miraculously. We weren’t meant to survive without a mother—and if we did we are wild and unknowable in some ways.

Maybe the connection between music and wildly unkept babies isn’t clear, but it feels right to me, so I’m just going to go with it. Music is the universe being expressed through a body in some form or another. I am also that, the universe being expressed though a body. What makes me a ROCK STAR is that I did something amazing that most people can’t do: I survived my infancy and the rest of my life without my home planet. ROCK STARS are ROCK STARS because they worked their asses off and made the most of what they had—relinquished babies are the same. You have to be a ROCK STAR to survive that kind of chaos and pain.

The first time I remember really being hit by a song was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. My mom was learning to play it on the piano, and she would play their album and sing along. That song! How could something so beautiful also be so astonishingly sad? I use the word sad but Bridge Over Trouble Water didn’t make me sad as much as it made my bones ache. It was like seeing something adult you weren’t ready to experience as a child, maybe perfume or a dead mouse. Simon and Garfunkel were ROCK STARS because they made something beautiful out of nothing more than some from of longing.

Imagine if when our birth mothers thought about having to give us up, they thought, “My rock star is going to be okay,” instead of “This poor thing,” or “I hope this creature dies so I can get back to my life.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’d have been born with a little more chutzpa. Like, I’m here world—where’s my stage? Instead of, Waaaaaaa!! Poor me!! Where is she????

What if my parents hadn’t known to call me “adopted” and thought the proper term was “rock star”? They could have had conversations like this": Person on the street, “Your baby is adorable! Where did she get that hair?” My mom, “Oh! She’s a rock star!”

Or, at the doctor’s office last year for a mammogram, “What’s your family history?” “I don’t know, I’m a rock star.”

GOSH, THAT WOULD FEEL SO MUCH MORE FUN THAT SAYING I’M ADOPTED!!

“Why did you drop out of college three times?” “I’m a rock star.”

“Why did you get divorced twice?” “I’m a rock star.”

“Why do you have control issues?” “I’m a rock star.”

Maybe I’m going to start a podcast called ROCK STARS ON.

You’ll be the first person I interview.

(I realize this was all over the place and isn’t logically all that sound—but it’s music, baby.)