<a href="https://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=254982689">Adoptees ‘Flip the Script’</a> < northernspy2 > 11/14 04:12
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/parenting/2014/11/13/adoptees-like-me-flip-the-script-on-the-pro-adoption-narrative/?emc=edit_tnt_20141113&nlid=5128694&tntemail0=y&_r=0&referrer
"I can’t remember not knowing I was adopted. My parents told me early, believing, as most of us do, that honesty always reigns. My biological mother, then a 20-year-old student, relinquished her rights to me when I was born in 1977.
As an adoptee (rhymes with “refugee” and “amputee”), being forsaken by my biological mom has burdened me, for as long as I can remember, with a sense of inborn exile — a gaping hole where my identity should be. Even notes from the foster home where I lived for four months as an infant before being adopted by my parents betrayed whispers of my growing discontent: “Cries constantly.” “Frowns at herself in the mirror.”
I started therapy at 15 and medication at 17 in a struggle to fight the depression that had consumed me since childhood with its soul-scraping negativity, barbs of self-loathing and perpetual hypervigilance against even the pettiest wrinkle of rejection...."
I just read this and I started writing a reply in the forum, butt then I realized that brevity is not my strong suit and I just kept going and going. This would have taken four parts in the forum, but I can dump it all here. I have other blogs that are very popular on other subjects but I don't usually write them on Ambien. I'm keeping them separate from this blog of course. I started keepin' them separate because I didn't want to be asked for a baby and I didn't want to violate Peanut's privacy by putting things about her and her history online, but now I also have to do it because I have crazy bitches from Craigslist Adoption Forum, or possibly just one very determined crazy bitch, who have threatened me with all manner of getting arrested, getting sued and even trying to kick my ass. They get so cute when they've got the vapors there grammr and accuracy go way down and they USE CAPS and periods.between.words but sofar THEY.HAVENT.TRIED.BOTH. They get frustrated when pwnd and dissapear for a while. Sly has done it the most but LL did it the most recently. Anywhoo this girl does not know what she might have avoided by adoption. A lot of adoptees blame the adoption agencies of creating orphans. That's insinuating that a reasonably intelligent girl is not strong enough to resist them. Methinks that makes her not strong enough to parent either and I don't see how these girls sucked into this are not all in cults by now being unable to say no to someone pretending to be their friend in even when their sheep's clothing is obvious. I don't think these girls were really trapped, forced or coersed, especially when so many of them took literally decades to decide that they were wronged. That's just easier to blame everyone else for what happened to them.
It hurts a lot that I am not raising my daughter, but I made this bed. Usually its easy but I do my very best to enjoy this life I wanted. One of the most important things that makes it feasible for me to raise a baby now is that I live in my husband's house. My passion for helping the homeless has often meant that I have people detoxing from hard drugs in my house a lot. They've stolen things and they've gotten violent and I found needles in my house, it doesn't seem like a place for a child. But now I have people coming off the street in my old house and I live with my husband so it's safer. And quieter. And I can still do what I believe I was put here to do, help the homeless. I don't think I'd be able to keep that household going and survive without his income also. This is just another way I am in common with those of the BSE. There are things I wanted to do with my life that were not compatible with parenting, like help the homeless. I've helped dozens of people off the streets, I will continue to do this till I die. I didn't want to give that up. I don't have any family other than those I've helped this way. It's the only thing I can do that will matter after I'm gone.
The people who complain about their lives adopted don't know what bullets they dodged, what they got to avoid. The most common reasons my foster sisters would be where they were was stepdads, and moms who just couldn't leave them no matter what horrors they reaped on their children. I remember one little girl came in beat to a pulp. Later I found out she had an STD, and the stepdaddy and her mom ran away together. She got it from her stepdad, who she called Daddy since she was a baby.
To live in poverty and insecurity. To have a few different stepdads in a year and to be asked to call 'em daddy. To have a few of them that feel you up or beat your mother. The ones bamboozled by an adoption agency would have no chance at all kinds of things in the real world, especially abusive boyfriends, or cults for that matter. Or even just timeshares presentations. All the I thought I was their friends, they isolated me, I owed them, I didn't want to disappoint them, they controlled me with shame, all that x20 with a bad boyfriend or a cult for that matter. Instead she could have easily been raised in a creepy cult with rotating stepdads.
I'm not saying adoption doesn't come with it's problems, I'm just saying that everything comes with problems. She got to go with a couple that was prepared to parent and a little more mature emotionally. Bad things can happen, I think the church that Peanut goes to is dangerously close to a cult. It's just less likely to.
When I was growing up, I didn't know what my identity should be either. Visits with my halfies were rare and far between, usually at the same time I saw my mother. Am I this person? Many of my halfies were not white and none look like me except minor things like exact same nose. I felt that I was definitely not any of these people. And I surely didn't want to be my mother, always smelling of cheap cigarettes and overemotional and always promising baby this time I'm gonna make it I'm going to leave the streets behind and bring all my baby girls home!" I'll never forget how it felt to know I was terrified of this. Foster parents don't touch children much but she hugged us frequently without regard if we wanted a hug ever. I think I would have done better as a child to fantasize and wonder about her than to know the truth.
I think this poster is being a bit over-dramatic about what it means to know your genetic heritage. It's one of the world's questions of just how much of who we are comes from our genes VS our experiences. I guess as the child of a prostitute and unknown John I have ego-related reasons to think this need to know about and importance of genetic links.
It's not really the prostitution really that bothers me anyway. I've heard prostitution is both the world's oldest and the most honest profession. I would never want to date a guy who saw a prostitute, but some people want to do this and we should provide the service. She's weaseled out of some charges but also did shockingly little time for some awful things. I consider selling drugs is a victim-less crime but a few violent things too.
As she rounds the corner of mid-50s there's less and less buyers I shudder to have some hints based on charges she weaseled out of of got drug treatment or might have even rolled 3 to not do serious time for. I noticed once my mom was really high and panhandling. I asked her if she could help me get a hold of a speed-ball, and added that I had just turned 14 and really wanted to try it. I said I had tried pot and beer before. When she went in to get the drugs, I bailed. I really wanted her to change her mind. First I thought she would refuse just because I looked very young, or if I emphasized it more. Nope. I'd like to think she would have given that girl something harmless instead. So its not really the prostitute about my mom that makes me sick.
I am not that. I'm a skilled office worker and know too much about civil forfeiture to consider selling drugs. The ladies at the adoption forum insist that my boyfriend does, it's just some crazy shit they made up and keep repeating. I would never allow a drug deal to go down in my house, I know how RICO laws work. I wouldn't date a drug dealer because having someone over all the time makes my mostly paid off home a drug dealing station and also in period if he were caught. No fuckin' way I'm risking my house for that shit. Also drug dealers work all the time and I don't like jumpin' out to sell at 3am.
One thing that bothers me about the BSE women at the forum I frequent is that they seem to think they are better than everyone else because they were born into a middle class family. Poor girls will game the system their whole lives. but with a tiny hand-up they would have made it through college with babies in tow and no problem. It's their, uh, middle class values they say. Middle class values are a punchline, a meaningless buzz term that politicians use. The only definition they could find for middle class values emphasized over-consumption and keeping up with the Jones'. I guess it also includes leaving your child so that people would not think you had premarital sex and so you could keep all those fake friends who don't even really know you.
They accuse me of dumping my child, but I made an adoption plan. I see her all the time. I don't have input in raising her, obviously, and it's really hard sometimes to step back and remember I don't have a say. I really wanted her to be raised without the influence of a church but these previous agnostics have found a church and she enjoys it every week. It breaks my heart that eventually this will lead her to be ashamed of her body and feel guilty about her very nature, being told her natural urges and very essence is inherently bad because some lady had some fruit a while back. Why put the tree there to begin with? If he made people then why the fuck did he not know that the one that he said stay away from was the most appealing one? He could have put teh tree on another part of the planet or made it 50' tall. That bastard. I don't want my daughter subjected to this, but these are the kind of decisions I relinquished the right to make when I did this adoption.
I am a person that needs a lot of quiet me time to be happy. Sometimes I take a mental health day at work and spend the entire day writing songs poems and articles, painting, recording or doing crafts. Sometimes I just don't want to be bothered for a whole day, at least twice a month. A few times I've gone to the airport and picked a place that is leaving in the next few hours, harder to do after 9-11. Or go camping in the woods or on the shore or snowboarding. I can do it all stoned, or I can be sober. I take at least 6 weeks off every year for conventions and other travel.
Thinking about the burning man kids area really helped solidify for me that I do not want to parent. Burning man is about exploring and interacting, but the kids camp just stays at kids camp. Their curfew keeps them from being involved in most of what happens there, and most of their time and energy is taking care of the kids. There are lost children there all the time, I have found and returned a lot of lost children at various festivals. Usually stoned out of my mind, I felt bad knowing their parents were too. Someone could have really hurt them and they wouldn't have been reported gone until morning. They were lonely and scared and trying to find mom in a big crowd. This is the kind of thing that happens when people are not ready.
There's no doubt that adoption hurts everybody. There has to be some disappointment for the adopters, many of which really wanted to have biological children and are still at some levels upset that they cannot. It might be too easy for them to blame any problems with the child on heredity or the trauma or getting adopted. I hope this doesn't result in children getting unnecessary drugs, those are prescribed hundreds of times more often than they are needed. A child is not hyperactive or disrespectful if they don't want to shut up and do math, they are a child. The more I think about it the more I wish I could talk them into homeschooling Peanut not with their church but with some local homeschooling groups.
I sometimes have to tell myself over and over that I am just a family friend. Per our agreement I would have no more say in how Peanut is raised than I would if I was just a family friend. That is all. This is what I agreed to but it feels so unnatural at times. I care about this little girl more than everything else I have ever cared about combined, and its hard to know that the church will surely hurt her at one point. Why tell her she is inherently bad and flawed and that her sexuality churning inside of her is wrong? I really hope because of that church she is not gay.
I took a sleeping pill tonight and I still can't sleep. I think I'm going to call in sick for the 2nd day in a row. I'll probably still have ot have the phone forwarded in but I won't have to do anything else or even change out of my slippers. It's a slippers day. Sometimes this adoption thing just swallows me whole. I really liked writing without having to worry about the length.
I'm kind of ashamed of what I wrote yesterday. I think I'll delete it and write a more coherent story of what happened. All of it from just getting out of a break after a LTR that didn't work out to the rape and the pregnancy him running and getting caught and Mexican mail and calls not answered and hung up on to more and more calls and carepackages sent back unopened and answering and telling them I wanted them to take her and the long walk from my house to her house and deciding not to abort under the tree and running into her stoned and making her mom mad to when I found out she was pregnant and when they were going to church and first quit to the whole thing.
But I don't have to do all that now, because I feel a little better now. I think I'm going to sleep. I'll find out later how to delete that first post and replace it with my intro story. Ambien makes me weird when it doesn't knock me out.
