To my house.
People who I had never invited over before. I really like them, and I have been on several social occasions with them, and have had dinner at their house.
Actually, the female half of the couple I see socially about 3 or 4 times every week and we get on like gangbusters.
I adore her. She is one of those people that seems incredibly connected with whatever it is people get connected with. She is smart and funny, and oh so kind.
I have never invited them over before. Ever. It was a really big deal and I almost changed my mind. It took a tremendous amount of courage for me.
It is not that I mind having people over to my house, it is weirdly enough, that I mind having people over to my house that don’t know I am adopted.
Being adopted isn’t something I offer readily to people, after all this friend and I have only been sharing the ups and downs of life for about five years, I hardly know her…
Really, she is one of the most important people in my day to day life.
I was afraid of her coming over and seeing my pictures on my wall and tell me there was no way I could be related to those people, because I am not.
I was afraid of Tomtom and my sweetheart as outing me as a psycho who spends way too much time on the internet talking about adoption.
I warned them both not to say anything before they came.
I told my sweetheart who was surprised I hadn’t told her, Tomtom is used to my paranoid insanity. After all he grew up with me hushing him when he would say things to my adopted mom, “You aren’t the only grandma I have from my mom you know”
Great parenting I know, honestly I should write a book about how to be a crappy adopto-parent.
Okay, so I am telling sweetheart not to say anything. He can’t believe I haven’t told her.
“No, I haven’t, and it is especially important that we don’t because she says really awful things to me about adoption. If she knew I was adopted she would fall on her sword” I explain.
“You have to tell people, so they know not to say stupid things in front of you” he counters.
“They are just expressing their feelings, why should they not be able to do that? Their feelings are not stupid. Besides I hate how when people know you are adopted they blame all your personality flaws on that.” I answer.
“So you want them to think you are crazy for no reason then?” He asks
“Yes, let them wonder” is my response.
“You are going to break her heart” he tells me.
It strikes me off guard.
I know, I have done it before. I have been very close to even just friends, who think they know everything about me and when they find out they don’t know me at all, they feel betrayed.
I can make new friends, I think. It is easy to make friends.
I am trying to stay in this friendship though I remind myself. It is really valuable to me.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
I think it went well, but I still feel shaky and jittery today. It was so overwhelming. The shame I feel. The shame I feel at this being a part of my life, my family, who I am.
Other people talk about their families and take pride in Uncle Joe’s accomplishments, or laugh at Aunt Betty’s funny ways. Even something as mild as that can be upsetting for me.
When I think of my family, I think of people who deposit infants at agencies, get in their cars and drive away forever. The enormity of that, the gravity of that, bowls me over. I will forever be from a family that gives away children.
Now that is interesting. People love to tell stories about things like that. I so know that. Once when my mom was visiting me, but staying with a friend she made a comment about the friend would be asleep by the time she got back to her house.
“No she won’t, she will be up waiting to hear all the freak-show details” I commented. She told me the next day I was right.
I don’t want this part of my life to be fodder for hushed tones and knowing glances.
I don’t even know how to begin to integrate something so horrific into my identity. I don’t want to have to. I had nothing to do with this.
HD and I used to get in horrible fights about this. He was really angry with my mother. He didn’t want me to have anything to do with her.
“What kind of people behave that way with their own flesh and blood?” he would hiss as he made his case.
“My people, my people“
Posted by Cyndi on July 6, 2009 at 2:10 am
That could be my story, if you replaced the word adoptee with the word barren. It’s like once people know that about me, they feel like they have to hush conversations about pregnancy around me. Multi-racial is another word that I feel that way about – that if I say it out loud certain people will feel a certain way. Pit-bull lover, pro-choice, and even pro-circumcision cause that butthole clenching fear. So does OCD. I have others that only my husband of almost 10 years knows because he’s been there for them.
My kids face this a lot because they were “Foster Kids.” On the day we were able to sign our intent to adopt paperwork, my daughter told her teacher “I’m not a foster kid anymore! My mom and dad will be mine forever!” The teacher told her to hush, that it wasn’t something to say out loud like somehow the things that had happened TO her made her dirty. My oldest son gets lumped in with the bad kids in the class because teachers knew he was in a foster home. I spend a lot of my time fussing at teachers and faculty about this kind of discrimination. They have no right to treat them differently because of how they came into this world and into my home.
I have to tell myself the same thing I tell my kids. There’s no reason to be ashamed of where you came from. You can’t change the past and you can only be who you are. Everyone has a crazy family story they don’t really want put out there. They talk about Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty so they don’t have to talk about how Great-grandma Mary had 5 kids by 5 different men, and Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty don’t know who their daddy is for sure. They talk about that so they don’t talk about Uncle Jimmy who had a mental illness that he was ashamed to get help for and he disappeared one night 20 years ago. We talk about how this Grandma used a roll of packing tape on every package she put in the mail, but shut up when it comes to Grandpa’s drinking. Everyone has a story. It’s what makes us complex and interesting. It’s what matures us into adults. It makes us like Shrek and gives us layers like onions.
I bet you could tell your friend and she would still be your friend. I bet she even has a story that makes her feel like you feel, that if anyone were to know they would be disappointed. You could even say “I met this chick on the internet who has this theory that everyone has a story that’s not quite a secret, but they kinda feel weird about. Do you think that’s true or do you think some of us are just plain jane vanilla?”
Posted by joy21 on July 6, 2009 at 4:22 am
I bet you are right.
That is a very sweet comment, thank you.
Posted by angelle2 on July 6, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I know I am on the other side of this story, your mother’s side, but this hit home as to why I am silent about reunion to my friends and why I declined meeting my son’s coworkers on one occasion.
And why when I visit him next month I probably won’t go to his church to be trotted out as his birth mother. I do not want him, his family, or me to be the freak show. And in my heart of hearts I know on some level we would be. It makes me want to crawl under a rock.
Posted by Mei-Ling on July 7, 2009 at 4:58 am
[I will forever be from a family that gives away children. ]
…
This is so profound.
Posted by Theresa on July 7, 2009 at 2:21 pm
[This is so profound.]
It is, isn’t it? I recently saw a picture of my grandparents, and that was one of the first thoughts that crossed my head: This smiling, happy couple thinks having their eldest daughter leave their first born grandchild in a hospital and never talk about it again is a good thing.
Posted by Kippa on July 8, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I can’t pretend to understand fully.
But I bet Cyndi’s right too.
Posted by jmomma on July 8, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Mary did wait up for me, because she wanted to be included in my life, as a friend that cares about and supports me. I wasn’t expecting it. I am still learning to receive the caring and attention of people that want to be friends. There are people that talk in respectful tones and give loving glances too.
I love you.
Posted by joy21 on July 8, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Well, you are right, and I was just guessing about Mary, I don’t even know her. Those were just my feelings.
I know part of it is just ME, me indulging in all the shame. It is just I feel so insecure about my ability to navigate it, that it will swallow me, the information will get out of my hands and passed around and come back capriciously—
Oh I am going to need more than a run on sentence to find my way out of this one.
Posted by jmomma on July 9, 2009 at 2:09 am
Yeah. For me it goes back to learning to sit with fear, learning I can be a good hostess, even when I’m screaming and lying and covering my tracks. Eventually…
Posted by J on July 10, 2009 at 4:57 am
I am completely amazed by this post, by the honesty of it, and how you’re right…how many people have stories that they don’t tell, don’t know how people will take it, don’t necessarily want to go into the layers of feeling that accompany the revelation.
My husband doesn’t like to tell people that he was a Mormon as a child, because he doesn’t identify at all with that life now. I don’t tell people (right away) that my sisters are half sisters, my brother half brother, my parents were just good friends who went too far one night…
My friend doesn’t tell people that her mother is institutionalized after a failed suicide attempt.
I wonder what my daughter won’t tell people, at least until she is ready to risk the reaction and the careful conversations?
Very thought provoking. We are all so very different, and yet…
Posted by joy21 on July 11, 2009 at 2:50 am
Thank you J. That is very sweet.
Shame is a hell of thing…
Posted by issycat on July 12, 2009 at 10:19 pm
My husband told me the other day that he is still surprised that I kept the fact that I was adopted from him until about three months into our courtship.
It’s just not something I told people especially beaus.
The biggest reason is that I felt (and still feel) that it makes me look broken or damaged or unlovable to others.