Adoptee Terminology for context:
I just had the realization while watching the d!ddy documentary (I’ve known bits and pieces but didn’t bring them together for a long time), but my AM would always say that we were close to living on the street and used money against me when we were fighting. When I started living with her she would constantly call me ungrateful because my first 6 years of life my Nina would give everything for me with money she didn’t have, and although I am glad that with that I’ve learned to be super conscious of money (as well as being impoverished lmao), she gave me so much money anxiety that it took a lot to get out of me anything that I’d want past the age of like 11 years old. I felt guilty for my Nina buying me things at the age of 6-7, I was a literal child and because of my upbringing I attached to materialistic things a lot, especially when it was connected to my grandma.
I was never rich, but we weren’t poor and it makes me so sad to know that she would hold money over my head as a child when we weren’t ever poor. I’m not saying she wasn’t struggling, she was a single mom and was moving around, but she had the help of her family and help from my AF, which I know now is more than she claimed as he’s been more active in my life than ever now that I’m an adult and has kept things I thought were chucked out because of money. My dad had his own issues and I’m not discrediting either that they went through but it upsets me because she would constantly be on me about being truthful and honesty and yet she lied to me unless it was to negate me, which is one of the things she promised she’d never do (the other being never to lay hands on me, and she broke that too)
Living paycheck to paycheck and struggling financially helped me realize just how reality wasn’t what it seemed. And it’s crazy because my AM at the end would be like “I’m sorry you didn’t have a rich black family to take care of you”, or “I could’ve just let Nina put you into foster care”, but literally the only thing I asked for was to acknowledge that with me being a transracial adoptee, I was never taught to love my skin or my hair by her, I struggled with being audhd and it affected me so badly.
It wasn’t about getting cornrows all the time, hell I was happy to get it done once during the summer while I was at my dad’s. It was just the effort of caring about my hair or letting someone who knew teach me, it was just about me never knowing my culture.
The d!ddy documentary is lowkey teaching me my culture as it might have been, though I will say I am privileged to be someone who didn’t grow up in the hood. I’m learning so much about artists from the 80s and 90s that I was never allowed to listen to because rap was inherently “bad”. Hell I got yelled at for saying “ain’t” or any other slang for that matter, and microaggressions happened all the time (albeit not intentionally)
This is getting long and idk if this comes across in a way that is understandable but god, the more time goes on the more I’m just… sad about how much I was in the fog.
Why was I able to acknowledge my privilege and use that to be more educated and better myself but she can’t because she’s so caught up in how it’s all my fault?
And why did I trust her for so long until I was with my spouse (who has actually lived in the ghetto) and she opened my eyes to the amount of abuse and lies?
I know it’s not my fault but i wish I could’ve seen it. I mean I did see it, but not enough to not also question myself because I was constantly shown my thoughts and opinions didn’t matter.
