Thanks for the LOLZ

It must be strange to be an adoptive parent in today’s world, when I was growing up, I don’t think there was much concern or knowledge about the negative side of adoption for anyone, in a way that sounds kind of awful and isolating, given that I grew up, as far as I know, with the paradigm that adoptive parents were naturally superior to pretty much everyone. They had all the answers and abilities to raise very wanted children. I don’t know how easy it is to escape there are negatives in adoption now.

I am sure it is possible, and from what I read, there are all kinds of different adoptive parents, for the most part I still shy away from them, but this has more to do with my own issues than who many of them are as people. When I was growing up I so wanted to heal my aparents fertility issues, I am still exquisitely sensitive to infertility issues, I hate that because I shouldn’t have them, gettting pregnant for me was always a fight against pregnancy, even though I really wanted a big family, my life has never afforded me that luxury.

But you know just yesterday, I was complaining to another woman that I don’t know well, but who is a health care worker, so it wasn’t a non-sequitor, wait did I say don’t know well? Don’t know at all but only came in contact with because she is a healthcare worker, about my menstruation, and she laughed and said, “Oh I know, but I always comfort myself with the fact, at least I am not pregnant again” It is funny, comments like this hit me like cold water. I catch myself and say, kind of sickly, ” mmmmm yeah” closed mouth smile, and think, this woman doesn’t know that I have a child, this woman doesn’t know that I am fertile, this woman doesn’t know that I am not desperately trying to have a child and every period feels devastating, that I had convinced myself I was pregnant, the symptoms of PMS really are the same as pregnancy. She doesn’t know if I just miscarried for the 14th time. Okay, none of those things are true. I didn’t, I wasn’t, I haven’t.

She just looks at me like another woman, part of the sisterhood of women who get pregnant and unexpectedly, which I am, but not all women are. She is being completely dense, just because I look young ( I am not, I am 35 and know people my age struggling for their first born). I actually feel protective still, of infertility, I spent so many years in its shadow, people I really love, my aparents were dealt that unhappy hand. Other aparents I knew when I was growing up as well. Good people.

It is also curious to me that a lot of the people I knew, my aparents included weren’t as blithe about adoption as some of the aparents, I see on line, nor as enlightened as some of the aparents I see on line. They were more measured, the ones I grew up with in real life, neither as entitled nor as compassionate, depending on what end of the spectrum we are talking. They were more average, fumbling their way through, I did know one set that is still incredibly, painfully entitled, and a set that was shockingly compassionate, it is the latter set that implored my amom to get my records, that took it upon themselves to find out my and their children’s records were available to adopitve parents. Goodness knows not all adoptive parents are created equal, in fact it almost seems to me that there could be a nearly mathematical equation derived from adoptive parents compassion and their adoptee’s willingness to face the unfaceable, we were relinquished by our families to strangers, to the hope of kind strangers.

Some of those strangers are in fact very kind, but even the kind ones to a certain extent I avoid, not out of hatefulness, just that, I am afraid I will fall into the pit of trying to heal something that it is not my business to heal, in a way that causes me harm, because I need to heal myself, which is already a big enough burden for me at this point.

Getting to the point, late as always, but the point of this post. I was cruising around my internets and I discovered what to my wondering eyes should appear, but posts by adoptive parents ridiculing adoptee pain. “Crazy people and their crazy agendas” in regards to adoptees suggesting that there is some harm inherent in adoption. Like a lot of adoptees, I am neither pro or anti adoption, certainly anti to current practices, but if you were to ask me should one never claim legal custody to another’s biological child, I would answer no. Of course there will always be times a child is better off in the permanent care of others. We will never do away with untimely death. There will always be children who need parents. Even if we healed all the damaged children who grew up to be damaging adults, there would still be a need for adoption in some form.

Adoption offers abandoned children personal investment in a way that legal guardianship does not. I still fail to see how legal guardianship is different than foster care and a child’s need for care does not end at 18. Mine certainly didn’t, even though I was in reunion very young, I could not have turned to my bios for help. I could and did turn to my adoptive parents, and their care for me will never be forgotten. Maybe I could have gone to my father, but I didn’t, I went to my aparents, and I will always honor them for being there as much as they were. In turn I fully expect and DESIRE to be there in their agedness, that is the difference to me between adoption and foster care. A lifelong investment on both parties is the difference to me.

But getting back to the LOLZ, I find it physiologically impossible not to be affected by adoption. I do. I am of the camp that if you have no issues from adoption that is because you are in deep denial. I don’t think that makes one doomed, just a lot to deal with. I don’t think that means your life will suck, but you have some pretty heavy shit.

Some adoptees aren’t as lucky as I was, some adoptees went into homes that completely denied they were even adopted, can you imagine the betrayal? Findig out the people you depended on and trusted lied to you? most adoptees go into homes to heal infertility, can you imagine the burden that is to place on a child? I can, I did. There is no way I would have been adopted if my parents had been fertile. there is no way I would have been adopted by these particular people if I was male. I had to hear growing up that they wanted their own child, meaning bio, how on earth does that feel? I know.

Still some adoptees go into much worse situations. So they grow-up, they talk about it, they live with the subtle and not so sublte reactions of their aparents and extended afamily, their denial, my own mother has a cousin who was adopted and for years she told me how wonderful that was and how he was treated AS IF he was part of the family. Then later admitted, he felt very different. Which is comical to me as I can’t imagine my nfamily as seeming anything if not odd.

SO, I believe all adoptees are damaged by adoption whether or not it is ultimately in their best interest. I can’t see being cruel about these issues as being in anyone’s best interest. Still, that is the reaction I see from some on line adoptive parents, cruelty, mockery. I know some adoptees are so hurt that I can’t even talk to them, sad but true, there are some adoptees, I will not deal with. Out of a self-preservation, I will not be harmed by these people broken by their situations, but I do feel for them.

Without the rhetoric, it is so simple, being abandoned by your mother HURTS, some of us go into homes that compound it by wanting us to be someone we can never be, an “as if” child. Some adoptive parents would never burden their children with the as if doctrine but instead honor the loss

.

But those that mock it? Those that fight against it, those who find the pain laughable and crazy?

Those people having those LOLZ break my heart, okay maybe they don’t, maybe my heart was broken by own situation, which is pretty heart breaking, and maybe my broken heart can be seen as soft and expansive now that it is broken open.

I do have to deal with a lot, but I don’t have to deal with a laughing amom. I don’t have to deal with an amom calling adoptees crazy, or slamming adoption, or saying there are no problems with adoption.

Those amoms that do, I am sorry for you, I am sorry life didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, if it is any consolation, my life didn’t work out the way I wanted it to either. But please don’t LOLZ me, and please don’t pretend to be my friend and then laugh at my more damaged sisters and brothers, because their pain is not funny to me.