#adoptee thoughts

[oliveptee]

people see adoption more as a trope than an actual thing that happens to real people and it's really fucking annoying

[red-envelopes]

isn't it so bizarre how most of adoption just falls on you, as the adoptee, to try and figure out what it has done to you, how to deal with it. neither adoptive nor birth families seem to really understand it and expect you, as the adoptee, to be the one to magically put things together like a jigsaw, it find all the pieces and force yourself into one space or the other and magically expect you to fit. and it's all entirely 100% up to you, like that family here won't help you and family there won't either. they won't understand it. it's all entirely up to yourself.

this thing has happened to you and it's your problem trying to fit it together, it's your job to make it make sense. it's your fault that this happened to you and you have to meld it in together. this happened to you and you have to live with it. what the hell lol

[red-envelopes]

somebody did this to me. Somebody consciously chose this for me. Somebody arranged this. Somebody signed off on this. Somebody chose to do this to me. I didn't choose this. I was a baby. so why do I have to be the one to pick it all up and fix it myself. why did my baby self hang onto all of this until it formed part of her schema and then never ever ever let it go

[red-envelopes]

adoptees and foster youth aren't your plot devices for a feel good story.

[red-envelopes]

wishing to god someone cared about the condition of adoptees vs wanting people to know that existing like this isnt a death sentence and it should all be condemned vs wishing someone knew how much it feels vs not wanting anyone to know and wanting to keep it toyourself because there's too many files and too many boxes and too many papers associated with your own existence

[red-envelopes]

i miss my mother :/

[red-envelopes]

I can't help it. I'm jealous. I'm furious. I'm jealous of those who can have it all. I want to celebrate the holidays with all my family, over here and over there. I want to share things. I want a mix of customs. I want to share this and that. I want to bring everyone together. I want everyone to be together. But we can't be together. I want someone to dress me in their traditional clothes and break bread at the table and cook rice and pork and eat turkey and potatoes with everyone. I want to do christmas crackers and hats and light the pudding with them over there and drink too much whiskey and cognac and listen to my parents, all four of them, laughing and talking to each other again, and all my siblings, and to introduce my family to each other, and share my traditions with those over there with those over here. I want more and more and more but I can't have more. I have more than what others have. I should be happy with what I have, but I'm not. Shame.

[red-envelopes]

Whenever a well known person does something alternative to the norm with regards to childbearing and parenting it always dredges up some conversation regarding adoption fostering and what constitutes "real" parenting and it is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!

It also brings up the sort of rhethoric of "there are hundreds of children waiting to be adopted"

Okay, so think about why that is and what are you going to do about it?? or are these imaginary orphans just a "gotcha"

Sometimes I'm so deeply entrenched into my activism and advocacy and my path as an educator both irl and online and I forget that I live in the real world and people don't actually care about the "product" of adoption and surrogacy and fostering i.e the children or adoptees or foster youth or anyone at all. It's seen by how people talk about things so deeply uncritically, how things are "just able to be done" you can "just" adopt, you can "just" ask a surrogate, there are thousands of orphans waiting to be adopted. Your mother loved you so much she gave you up for adoption.

And when you bring up children or adoptees or adopted adults or the "results" of surrogacy or donor conceived people or foster youth or care experienced people it's seen as baffling as to why you'd ever have brought this up in the first place? As if they're completely removed from the conversation, as if they're the one's not part of the conversation when they're the entire result of everything and the most affected.

"They're with a better family now" HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT.

This is tiring. This is frustrating. And you can yell raise hell and shout and wave all you like but somehow for some reason because people aren't involved in adoption people DON'T see and DON'T hear. And I'm really truly at a loss.

And then on the other side it's like "they're not real parents" "this isn't your real child" "adoption isnt real" "only biological family can be a true family' it just proves that no one is listening! No one is listening!!! NO ONE IS LISTENING TO ACTUAL ADOPTEES!!!! The People MOST AFFECTED by these conversations are not included at all. It goes too far way over one way or the other.

Things are much greyer than one makes it out to be. And even though there are people shining light through the fog there are people who aren't looking and aren't seeing. And it's not just a few. It's so many. And that isn't just.