A rejection by my own culture
When my best friend's mother told me she would never adopt because she could never love the child I felt my heart clench. Whether it was for me or for them, I don’t know.
Two years later when I found out she thought I was a bad kid by virtue of being adopted, that she though I was a liar, a thief, a manipulator- or had the potential to be one, I felt my heart clench so hard cracks formed.
Two years after that she told my best friend of seven years she could no longer associate with me because I was going to be a bad kid. Me, the one who had received awards, led clubs, founded clubs, been nothing but a good kid. And all of this, I found didn't matter... Because my friend cut me off.
And so I found loyalty meant nothing, that my friend had been poisoned. Or worse yet had, in a desire to please her mother, told things to poison her more against me.
And I think what hurts the most is that I saw the friend as a sister, her mother as a mother figure who provided to me what my own white mother could never provide: a connection to china, to my culture. And other adoptees have spoken on being adopted, the idea of being rejected.
And for me it felt like I was being rejected by my mother for the second time, and not only being rejected by my mother, but my culture.
I think my heart strings snapped and my heart shattered. And it is no wonder I am sensitive to jokes about my heritage.