The first time I spoke to my mother, one of the things that I felt compelled to tell her was, “I lie a lot” which is funny because everyone lies and I really do not lie a lot. I was a teenager though, I was just a youngin’ and what I realize now that I didn’t then, what I was trying to articulate is that ‘My whole life feels like a lie’ I wasn’t capable of that level of self-awareness at the time. It feels like I am lying when I tell people the most even basic facts of my life, that is what I meant. My name feels like a lie, the truth who I am, one of my first lessons in life, who I am is irrelevant.

Who people want me to be, the truth that is expedient is what is relevant. Thanks falsified birth certificate. I mean my state’s government was complicit in telling me, “Hey as far as you go, the truth, well that is what we find to be most palatable, not the actual truth-truth as in factual statements, we will go with the most expedient of lies” Oh and just for my protection from the stigma of adoption, in the state of California unlike my non-adopted peers, I am only eligible for the long-form birth certificate that takes six weeks to get instead of 10 minutes. It says amended right on it, was filed 18 months after I was born and doesn’t have parental signatures on it, so it saved me from nothing. Anyone seeing it could have recognized it didn’t look like the other kids and assumed my illegitimacy, because all adoptees are guessed to be bastards, so don’t feel bad if you aren’t a “real” bastard and your folks were married, you still got the stigma. You still represent, huzzah!

I internalized it wholly. I do want to mention one other weirdness though, I never wanted to lie to my own mother, for some reason I recognized her as this really valuable part of myself, I want to say extension, but it wasn’t extension so much as source, I wanted her to know the real me very badly, and I so wanted her validation and comfort.

Yes, I did internalize that truth meant expediency and not accuracy. It didn’t bother me consciously, I mean how could it? I embraced it. I reacted by splitting myself into different parts, different roles, with different language. I would think to a certain extent this is normal that we all do this, but I took it to an extreme. It is definitely effective.

I am thinking on these things as I was recently made aware that one of my IRL adoptee friends, that I do not know through activism or on-line is a pathological liar. He has made some people I care about v. angry. Which yeah, I can sympathize with them, I mean a friend shouldn’t be a part-time job. What I have held my tongue about though is, why wouldn’t he lie? The foundation of his identity is a lie. The gov’t condones the lying. How is he supposed to internalize that truth has a place in his life? The truth was so horrifying that it made people’s faces melt-off, to hear the NCFA tell it, in the vital records department, gumming up the whole system of wholeness because you know, sticky-melted-off-faces getting on everyone’s shoes.

I mean the government is only telling lies about me to protect me and protect the goodness of all the sugary goodness in candy-mountain because some things matter more than truth, chiefly those things being: easy. ‘Sorry, Joy, so can’t tell you who you are because that would be um, erm, awkward, surely you understand?’

Oh boy did I ever, I took that one on full-force. I was an early-bloomer in adolescence, which meant I got a lot of attention when I was still a child. Not uncommon, but pretty confusing. For the most part I liked it, I mean who wouldn’t like people wanting to buy you things and give you rides to places you wanted to go and in exchange all you had to do was not let them touch ‘your shoulder’ as one boy said about my breasts which I heard third-hand, ‘She is like a princess, she won’t even let you touch her…shoulder’ No, I wouldn’t, but I would let him buy me stuff. He could take me to concerts, he could buy me posters of you know, lol, Billy Idol. Oh God, true that.

Embarrassing but true. The more boys the more stuff, I would always have one main boyfriend and some back-ups when I was really young, I didn’t feel anything really for the boys at all. Until I met Tomtom’s father, when I was of the advanced age of 14, but even so, it took me a long time to trust him enough to let go of my old ways enough to engage in my real first relationship, although I had dated one guy for almost two years previously, that sounds v. mature to me now as a person who has parented but hey, it was the 80s. But you know there was A. and then my sides, which I never felt comfortable having just one boyfriend, always had to have back-ups at that age as I have noticed I tend to have two of almost everything.

But I loved Tomtom’s father so much, I left my previous life and joined his. I still had my bff but other than that, I ran around with his friends, so for the most part was the lone-girl in a group of miscreant boys. At this time, my drug-use had gone from experimentation-HA- to full-time job. Or at least part-time, there are so many mythologies about drug use, and I do not want to discount those who dealt with addiction on a much more difficult level than I did, lots of those people exist.

My experience on the other hand was not altogether pleasant, but not one I regret. Yes, there were bad times, fo shizzle, but a lot of it was as David Bowie said, “a real-life adventure, worth more than pieces of gold” It was in the drug-culture that I still recognize the gifts of my hyper-vigilance, the boys would always send me into situations that they were unsure of, I have always had a persona that screams “SWEET, INNOCENT!” which in a way is accurate. There are two stereotypes that I would say are absolutely true about drug culture while most are not, but this whole song: Waiting for My Man oh yeah, Lou knew, which I was listening to tons then, “First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait” Yeah, and there was always some bullshit, some agenda, not unlike adopto-land. Someone is misrepresenting their story, someone is lying, someone is trying to leverage, so they would send me in and I would b.s. and b.s.ing with druggies sucks because they always say the same thing, like 100 times a night, “Can’t bullshit a bullshitter” but that is all anyone does is bullshit bullshitters. That is what I did. I used to say, “Go for it!” all the time because I thought that was the most asinine comment ever but those fuckers never understood my irony.

In all my reconnaissance missions, all my girl-decoy missions, I didn’t have a miss. I really didn’t. My hyper vigilance paid off. I was so attuned to others motivations, still am. Which ironically deals directly with my profession. I was the same me then, I was protective. I saw such awful things. I thwarted a burglary once just because I have never been able to stand people getting physically hurt. I did it on purpose like it was a joke.

As soon as I did it, “my/our friend” Marc escorted me out of the house with my arm being pulled tightly up and against my back. He got me outside and told me, “If you weren’t BD’s girl I would fucking break your arm right now” he pulled my arm up against my neck for emphasis. I had no reason to doubt him, I had seen him bash a security guard in the head earlier that year, knock the poor guy unconscious because we were of all things, sneaking into a concert. I had yelled at him then too, “You Dick! That was so unnecessary!” He had pushed me forward then like he pushed me forward that night up on top of a cinder-block fence, I was forced to sit on the roof all night, still don’t quite get that. But yes, I was “covered in bruises from mixing with losers” Marc Almond.

There was another incident where we were all getting gacked-out and there was some poor young girl who was super dumb-ass and I don’t want to even think about what the boys were planning to do to her but I did know they took her keys. It took me about an hour and a half to get her keys back, to get her home and again, the only reason I had the power to do that is I was someone’s “girl” but yeah even as a druggie I challenged the status-quo. Good thing they weren’t like the “good women” I attacked in blogosphere for the innocent crime of being aggressors to the vulnerable. Oh wait, that would make them just like the aggressive and quite often unkind thugs I was running around with. Oh but they are…

So that all happened and much worse things that would curl your toes and make you say WTF? No, but yes, things like that happen. And then other things happen. You find yourself with a baby at college. You know, with all these kids who had lives you can’t relate to, who graduated from Tam High or San Rafael who are super-concerned about the lame and mistaken idea that they made up 4:20, who are super-wet behind the ears.

People and parties, and whatnot, and you find yourself looking at a young man at a party and he is asking you where you are from and you think, ‘What can I say that will shut him down the fastest?’ because you already know the true story of your true life is not acceptable. Ask the state of California. So you say, “I am from Missouri, I was raised on a cow farm” because you don’t want to hear that sound, like the sound of someone laying their finger on a vinyl record and drawing it across. No I wasn’t abandoned, no I wasn’t a Kentucky-child-bride, no I wasn’t a druggie, no I wasn’t unwanted, no I know my mother and she loves me vs. she doesn’t want the kids that she really loves to know about me.

No, I am just like you.

“What is your major?” he asks

I look at his shirt, it has a picture of a flower on it.

“Botany” I answer.

“You have never been to Missouri” he answers.

“Yes, yes I have” and I had.

I look out the window, I can see the street sign reading “Haight” a neighborhood I have never been far away from. But that is not the truth that will be most helpful to me in the moment, that is not the truth that will free me from blame. The truth of who I am does not matter, why should what I am telling this young man about myself matter at all?

Not to me, am adopted. When I was with HD after about 6 years I told him one time about my birth certificate, he didn’t believe me at first and despite being a highly educated person, exclaimed, “It is illegal to lie on government records!” Well not if you are us and what are adoptive parents as a class doing about it? Nothing.

I am not ashamed of what I did when I was a kid now, I have a lot of compassion and respect for what I did when I was a kid. I was not a MAC, I was tough, I was not a Jess, I was smart and recognized as smart, sometimes even lol a genius and heroin addict, sadly am not a genius and have never done heroin, but that was a rumor.

And yes the boys liked my smartness, the whole boys don’t like smart girls is such b.s. Maybe start trying to be more friendly and less smug? works for me.

Whatever, I lied happily at that point, all these things I had done were SO SCANDALOUS, Things I did: drugs, got married at 16, moved out at 15, gave birth at 18, oh yes I am such a bad person.

But I am not, I made a success of my life of my child’s life. MAC and Jess are reaching for their smelling salts because we are not allowing them to ridicule us. What have they done? What businesses do they run? Just curious? What experience do they have being adopted? Oh they are so hurt? Did their moms leave them? or are they just hurt that they don’t get to make fun of adoptees? I mean how rough for them. lol.

Let me escort you out of the house with your arm up against your neck, oh but you wouldn’t know about that would you? Oh I could use a lecture about how on line cruelty matters, except that it doesn’t matter to them, they were given lots of opportunities to retract but instead they went on the attack.

They know more about adoptees than adoptees do, and adoptees need to be humiliated and ridiculed if nothing else.

Sweeties, I have seen the big tough mafia in real life, seriously, I have seen real physical harm in real life. I have seen the result of MACs and Jess’s and their ilks on real adoptees who have blown their own heads off. Nope, don’t feel a bit sorry. The only sorrow I feel is for their souls. I am disgusted by them.

I used to listen to this song and think it was in my past, I think it is in my present. I have no apologies for rebelling against the cruel and stupid who fight against adoptee’s well-being. As I said before I can forgive the stupid OR the cruel; not both.

I want everyone reading this to know that there is nothing in my life that could happen that would make me more convinced of their evilness. Nothing. So here is my lovely song:

I really hope you self-righteous hags find yourself in the mirrors you deserve

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January 16, 2012

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