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Speculation: What Has Adoption Given Me? What Has it Made Me?

Warning: this post is pure speculation and assumption. I haven’t done any background academic reading, nor have I even thought about this topic with other adoptees in mind. It is based purely on my own thoughts that have gone around in my head on my 3km (one way) walk to and from work everyday in the freezing cold. So excuse me if it comes off as complete and utter baloney. It could just be my brain freezing everyday. LOL.

*****

It was my birthday on Saturday. My 27th. I feel very old. LOL. But aside from feeling old, it was a nice, relaxing one, spent with my family. We had a BBQ, Robert made a honeycomb house and I got lots of books and other things. =D Despite the fact that I’m only getting older (who isn’t?), I was never one to dislike birthdays. And as a child, I never thought about my adoption or my birth mother or anything. It’s only been recently that I’ve begun to wonder: ‘hey, does my birth mother think about me on my birthday?’. As a child, my birthday was the second best day of the year. Second only to Christmas. It was a day all about me and the day that I got lots of presents and got to eat cake and feel special. I think this is what it is for many children, and in my opinion, that’s what they should be about for children: days of excitement and presents and balloons and wishes. As a child, I used to blow out my candles and wish I could fly like a bird. =P A simple, childhood wish. But there were never any about adoption or Korea. Which – I think – is a pretty good sign that my parents were doing something right.

I am usually making rather depressing and sad posts on this blog. And it’s so common for adoptees to focus on what they’ve lost by having been adopted. But I’ve been thinking about the type of person adoption has made me, as I believe it has really affected and influenced the way I think and act.

When I was a school student (at various ages), I remember watching and experiencing certain things my peers at school would do, not understand their reasons for doing such, then go home and say to my Mum: “why did such-and-such do this? Don’t they think it’s just going to… (insert-repercussions-of-actions-here)”. My Mum would answer with things like: “people don’t think. They’ll learn when they grow up“. Which is all very well. So for most of my childhood, I found myself thinking: ‘oh that’s stupid. I can’t wait ’til I’m in my 20s, ’cause then hopefully people won’t be so stupid’. (Bah. So much for that!) But ultimately, I think adoption has given me some sort of ability to think, and to think about things in a way that others don’t. I thought this was normal, but I don’t think it is, and after having read the blogs of lots of other adoptees, it seems we have this in common.

(Click “read more” to read the rest of this post)

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Choice.

Choice. It’s a pretty small word. Only six letters. But it’s a word that comes loaded with meaning, presumption and action. It’s a word that has been sitting in the back of my mind since starting to blog about adoption. It’s an idea that also comes up regularly on other adoption blogs, whether they be of adoptees, adoptive parents or first parents. We make choices every day. For me, choice is what determines getting up at 7:30 in the morning to go to work; drinking coffee when I get to work; continuing to write my story; whether we have home cooked food for dinner, or deciding to be lazy and order in; it was deciding to marry Robert; it’s the difference between buying or not buying those $500 boots in the window of my favourite boutique… etc etc. These all seem like quite obvious things: things we take for granted in western societies.

Choice plays a huge role in adoption, and I think it’s something that everyone knows is there, but no one really wants to talk about. It’s easier not to think about choice because not thinking about it can make the present easier to deal with.

I think what many people fail to realise is that there are different types of choices. Some of which are luxuries; not available to others in other places. Particular choices are like luxury items. My iPhone 4, MacBook Pro, 50″ TV,  ever-growing collection of books etc etc are luxury items that came from luxury choices. And I love that about my life. I love being 20-something. I love being at the stage where I’m old enough to make my own decisions. I’ve said this many times, but I was a pretty awful teenager. And part of what made me frustrated, as I remember it, was “not being able to do what I wanted”: not having the choice to come home when I wanted or go where I wanted, when I wanted. As a child, they were, of course, things my parents decided for me, regardless of whether I liked it or not. As children, we often don’t have the luxury of those choices, because it’s our parents’ duty to look out for us. Or so we like to think. The items I listed above are the results of my having the choice to purchase stuff that I don’t necessarily need. I didn’t need an iPhone 4. I’ll admit that. Even without a mobile phone, I’m sure I’d likely be surviving similarly to how I am now. I’d still be living in a wealthy part of Sydney, going to work each day, etc. Owning an iPhone 4 is not something that determines my survival in this world.

When it comes to adoption, there are different types of choices that I see get argued back and forth. I think it’s something that’s included in arguments, and probably will be ’til the end of time in the adoption world. Mei-Ling made a post here about whether or not her birth mother had a choice in giving her up. And until very recently, I had a bit of hatred toward my birth mother, because I always felt that she chose to get rid of me. (That’s got nothing to do with my life here.) But having read some birth mothers’ blogs and in thinking and researching a bit more, I’ve come to this realisation about choice: that it’s nowhere near as black and white as we like to sometimes assume.

I’m going to start by saying that, as I see it, there’s a conflict between choice for adoptive parents, adoptees and birth mothers. For most adoptive parents, the choice to adopt is a luxury choice. Just like my 50″ TV, it’s a choice that was made out of want. Regardless of the reasons for doing so, people adopt for selfish reasons. Adopting a child from a foreign country is not a biological need. You do not need children to survive. For survival, we need food/drink, shelter, warmth. We do not need children. And what I think many adoptive parents fail to see is that in adopting, they were lucky in the first place to even have the choice available to them to even consider adoption. No matter how you put it, adoptive parents have benefitted from the lack of choice available to mothers in dire straits and desperate situations. Adoptive parents have taken advantage of the fact that someone else has not had the luxury to choose.

You know what I can’t stand? Is when people make their own choices in life, then proceed to whinge about how terrible their lives are. One of the most recent examples that I saw of this was someone I went to uni with on Facebook, posting about her lack of having a job since she’s been out of uni. For almost a year, she has whinged about having to “only” work as a casual teacher when she wanted to be full time. Whinge whinge whinge everyday. But a couple of months ago, I believe she got some full time work. I, along with many others proceeded to congratulate her. And I nearly blasted her a few days later when I saw her complaining about the amount of work she now had, and that school holidays should be more frequent and longer. For people like this, nothing’s ever good enough and life’s so unfair and everyone else has everything while they go with nothing. My Dad’s family does this a lot. And although we don’t see them all that often, it drives me crazy to think that here are these people who could have gone much further in life, but haven’t because their lives are “just so drastic”. They only perpetuate their own misery and quite frankly… I want nothing to do with it.

That being said, I’m not saying this is something all adoptive parents do. But I often read adoptive parents’ blogs, many of which have an abundant amount of writing about how they feel so sorry for their child’s birth family and the loss their child has to experience. Yet I can’t help but think that had they not adopted in the first place, they wouldn’t be perpetuating, encouraging and continuing adoption and the lack of choice that many women have. Of course, this is not the only reason why adoption continues (DUH), however it seems a double standard to me when people adopt, then go on and on about how terrible it is for their child to have lost their birth heritage. Do you not realise that through your choice you have only continued to take things from your child for the happiness and satisfaction of your own wants? Again, I am NOT saying that adopting is wholly wrong (heck, I actually considered adopting one day, myself, the other day). And nor do I think adoption will ever truly end. But I think people really need to think much deeper about what they’re doing by adopting. Remember: it’s a choice. It’s a luxury. And as much as I hate to think of myself as another commodity like a television, that’s, in a way, what we are. We make others happy, we’re purchased, we make money for a third party.

Adoptees had no choice in being adopted. And this is what has often frustrated me the most. Despite what I just said above, I still love my parents. I couldn’t imagine any others. But I hate that I had no choice. OK, what baby gets a choice into what family they’re born in? Why is it different for adoptees? Well, quite frankly, regardless of who my family ended up being, I didn’t choose to have my heritage stripped away from me like a layer of skin. Having my Korean-ness taken away from me was through others’ choices. And that makes me angry in some ways. I wish I’d had the luxury to choose whether or not I sacrificed a part of myself.

I’ve experienced a very love/hate attitude toward my birth mother, and it was always easier to hate her at times, because I used to say to myself that she chose to get rid of me. I even got annoyed when I read birth mothers’ blogs, saying they didn’t have the choice but to give up their children and were still living the pain from having done as such. In my view, they were no different to the people that I mentioned above: those that make a choice then continue to whinge about the repercussions of that choice. But as I’ve read more, I’ve begun to think that maybe birth mothers don’t have this choice. Maybe adoptive parents are really the only people involved in the adoption triad that have the luxury that the rest of us would have loved.

You may (like I was/still am sometimes) be inclined to say “but your mother did have the choice. She didn’t have to give you up”, but I go back to what I said earlier about survival. Keeping in mind what Korean culture was like in the 80s (and still is), what would the alternative have been for my mother (assuming that she was, in fact, just another victim of harsh Korean society)? Had she kept me, would her family have kicked her out of the family for good (AKA: something that’s terribly unimaginable for traditional Korean families and their group mentality)? Would she have been living on the streets where I only would have died? If so, wouldn’t her only other “choice” be to give me up for adoption? Sure, giving me up and living on the streets is a “choice”, but it’s not a luxury one. It’s one that comes from need and fear. It’s not a choice that’s the same as whether or not one buys the latest technology. I don’t really like saying these things, because I don’t know my mother’s story and so I can only assume based on the research I’ve done over the past years into Korean culture and listening to the stories of other adoptees and their families. It also feels like I’m making excuses for her when I still harbour some sort of resentment toward her.

I don’t like to think that I go around feeling sorry for myself. And I don’t believe I do. But I can’t get parts of myself back. Sometimes that intangible loss feels as though I walk around without a physical limb. And what annoys me even further is that people think they can tell us adoptees that what we’ve lost in being adopted isn’t as bad as how our lives “could have been” had we not been as such. This often comes from white-privileged individuals: people who have become so accustomed to their luxurious choices in life, they think they can assume what it’s like to be in an adoptee’s shoes. But honestly: who are people in those positions to decide? Who are they to choose how we should and shouldn’t feel? Who are they to tell us such? Hence… who are Caucasian people to adopt us? Who are they to come along and take a child out of their home? What has decided this? Is it the fact that they had the choice in the first place? If they hadn’t had the choice; if all birth mothers had kept their babies, they would have been the ones without the choice. What is it about choice that gives power over others? Just because you have the freedom to choose something, why does that give you the right to impose on another’s life? Hmm…

Choice is a big thing. And like I said, it’s an idea that’s been sitting in the back of my head, simmering away. It plays a huge role in adoption when we don’t even really know it. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m the huge control freak that I am because I hated not having a choice about my identity when I was a baby. I’m a tad obsessed with the idea that I have to control my own life. When I was a child I used to think ‘I’m destined to be the way I am. I should have been white’, but now I just try to deal with my circumstances and do the best I can with them and make the choices that I have now. (Hopefully) without regret.

Anywho, it’s lunchtime! And it’s a beautiful day outside. I could probably write a whole lot more, but I think I’ll go sit outside with a book and my phone and my music.

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Fitting In: A Place All Us Adoptees Want to Be

I was recently asked what I thought/think about this video. It’s about three Indian American adoptees who go back to India for the first time since they were born and adopted to the US. (There’s also an article here for anyone who can’t be bothered watching the whole thing.) I had a few thoughts while watching this documentary, and I thought that what stands out quite a lot to me, as an adoptee, is the simple fact that most of us transracial adoptees “simply” want somewhere we can truly belong, because I think that’s – ultimately – a human need that many people seem to take for granted. Whether we’re Korean, Indian, Chinese, Australian… whatever, we all want/need to feel that we truly belong somewhere, and adoptees often go without that. Yes, of course we feel like we belong with our adoptive families and those that love us, but really… love cannot make up for the feeling of truly belonging somewhere; to something.

So I’m going to attempt to go through this doco and write my thoughts here. I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but we’ll see. LOL.

At the beginning, one of the adoptive mothers of one of the adoptees says:

I don’t think of Kaylan as Indian at all. I just think of her as my daughter. I don’t think of the colour difference… I don’t know how she sees herself.

I think a lot of adoptive parents are like this: colourblind. And it seems they consider this to be a positive trait. It almost seems as if it’s like justification in their actions of adopting. And I know my own family is also this way. My sister has said many times that she doesn’t see me as Korean. She just sees me as her sister. And although I know she means well, I think this attitude – from parents – only poses a “danger” to adoptees. Colour blindness ends up in ignorance of the things adoptees and children of colour go through in the wider world. It means that you’re not only blind to your child’s differences, it also means you’re blind to the experiences their differences make them targets for.

(In a less serious way, this has to be mentioned. LOL) Anisha (what a gorgeous name) says:

I love Indian food. If I could eat Indian food all the time, I would.

For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about Korean food. LOL. Not sure if that’s genetic or not, but there’s just something so familiar and homely about Korean food…

I think a lot of things are demonstrated through these three adoptees. The second one says:

I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I am, so I may as well… live it up.

I’ve sometimes thought this way: that there’s nothing I can really do about the empty feelings that come with being adopted, so I should just make the most of what I have in Australia, without Korea or any connection to it, other than my external appearance that I can’t change (not without a lot of money and a lot of plastic, anyway). But there’s a sadness that comes with thinking this way about life. It kind of feels like saying: “well, I have no hope of getting back that part of me that’s lost to adoption, so I’ll just make do with what I have”. It’s a sort of defeatist way of thinking, but the alternative poses so many challenges. Challenges that mean changing a part of who I already am, risking a part of who I am now to chase down something that may not even be possible. And could prove to only be a huge waste of time. It also means confronting things about ourselves that may be scary and may only oppose that which we’ve already learned and experienced. In one word: scary.

Anisha goes on to say:

I think I stand out really bad(ly). I’m really conscious of how I look. …if I walk into the grocery store, people look at me before they look at my Mum.

I think all of us adoptees are conscious of this. How can we not be? Others have communicated, through their accusatory looks, that we’re different to those around us.

Lizzie says:

I see myself as white. But I’m not as materialistic as a lot of Americans are.

I found this quote kind of interesting. I feel the same. That’s not to say that all non-adopted Aussies are materialistic. But I think being adopted gives you something else to think about. While others are thinking about the next pair of shoes they want to buy, we’re thinking about how we can go into that shoe store and not be looked at strangely when we want a gorgeous pair of shoe wear just as much as our blonde friends.

As stupid and as obvious as this may sound, the main difference I see between myself and the adoptees in this doco are the countries we come from. These girls go back to India and see a massive country full of poverty. As far as I know, my going back to Korea later this year is going to be very different. I doubt I’m going to see much poverty, but one of the most high-tech cities in the world, with internet that my husband only yearns for. As much as I know that Korea may have been just a little different 30 years ago, it would almost be easier to go back to my birth country and see poverty: people living in the streets with little access to basic needs. It would easily show reason as to why I may have been given up. But to see both wealth and luxury is going to be a tad difficult, and I’m almost afraid of how vulnerable and sick I may feel for a while… and I know I’m going to have to continuously remind myself that I, in all likelihood, was given up because of cultural necessities… not so much financial reasons… My birth mother is one of six. It’s likely her family isn’t living on the street…

The adoptees go on to say:

You’re seeing someone that you could have been…

But it makes you feel really isolated, too. I don’t fit in anywhere… I can’t fit in at home, and I can’t fit in here. It’s sad, because I had this picture of “I’m going to get over there and I’m going to feel like I’m part of something again… and you get here and you’re still isolated… you’re still treated different(ly).

…there’s some stuff mentioned about belief… but I think that’s worthy of a whole blog post on its own…

The cutest thing about the featured adoptees on this documentary is the friendship they make with one another. They even say:

We need to go make our own country of adopted Indian kids…!

It’s kind of testament to what I said here about wanting to start my own adoptee country: because we have identity experiences and understandings in common the way people of their nations have: that Koreans have with one another. They have common understandings of their culture, language, heritage… things we adoptees can’t share. But that absence is shared with other adoptees… I, too, wish I could start my own country with other adoptees and have others that have some deep, inherent understanding of my identity and my life.

Truthfully, there is probably a lot more I could say about this little documentary. And I probably will make that post about cultural beliefs and their place with me and adoptees. But I haven’t got the time right now. Ultimately, yes, I think adoptees have similarities, no matter what country we come from. We especially have the similarity of just wanting to belong and be with people that are like us: the main thing many of us grow up without. But I also feel that this is one of quite a few of these documentaries that seem to get made quite a lot, nowadays. There weren’t any real surprises or anything unexpected, and the main thing I saw was the differences between India and Korea. So although I can relate to what the girls go through as adoptees, I can’t really relate to who they are, racially when they go back to their country of birth. Yes, I’m sure I’ll go to Korea and feel just as isolated as I am here (maybe even more so), but I also think there are things (understandings and beliefs) that come from individual cultures… just another complexity that comes with the adoption cycle and experience.

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“Multiculturalism” or “Koreanism”? Or… Both?

In my last post here, Mica gave me a bit of advice that she was given. She said:

“Make sure you remember, though, that YOU ARE YOU. Not anybody you could have or should have been. You are here and now, blending all those identities, and that’s great. Embrace that and you’ll go far.”

I read that and sort of thought ‘yeah… easier said than done. What do you think I’ve been trying to do for… 26 years?!’. But I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe she’s right… I feel like for most of my life I’ve been trying to be either Australian or Korean. I’ve always just wanted to be one or the other, because I’ve always felt that it would be simpler, easier and that if I was one or the other I’d have something to identify with and to build my identity upon. I think that, when it comes down to it, this conflict that I’ve always felt is one of the things I hate about being adopted. Perhaps other adoptees are OK with being a mixture of both, but I’ve always struggled with it and I’ve always tried to fight it. But perhaps it’s time I… embraced it?

In thinking about this, I’ve been wondering: what is the “best” way to raise transracial adoptees? I’m obviously not going to be able to change the fact that I’m a mix of Korean and Australian, so what is best for raising young adoptees? Is it best for them to spend a lot of time with people of their racial heritage, or is it “simply” best for them to be amongst… people of all sorts of backgrounds?

One of the things I love about the people I work with and the office culture I work in is the mixture of people. We have a relatively small office. Including myself, there are… only nine of us. Out of those nine, only one is “purely” Australian. My boss is Canadian (and his wife is Greek), our marketing manager is Spanish, I’m well… me, my immediate colleague is Dutch (and his wife is Korean!), our events manager is Italian (and her boyfriend is Irish), two of the sales team are Indian, another sales member is a mixture of New Zealand and… a few other things, and the other sales person is purely Aussie. On Friday, my colleague brought in a whole batch of bulgogi that his wife and mother-in-law made. He cooked the whole thing in the office and even served it with rice and provided lettuce leaves to wrap it all in. It was a great afternoon. During lunch, we all spoke about having an International Food Day on Melbourne Cup day (they did it last year, too), where everyone brings in a dish from their own native background. I thought it was a great idea, especially since we’d all have something unique to add to the day.

What I loved about this was simply that we could all relate: despite the fact that we all come from various racial backgrounds, each one of us can relate to the fact that we’re all Australian, but we’re all also… something else. It was just a really good team bonding experience, and despite the fact that this was/is my work environment, I felt much more comfortable in it than I sometimes have within my own (extended) family and in-laws. Really, it came down to having an unspoken, yet very present understanding of one another, brought about by our differences but similarities. What’s more, is that it felt much more comfortable than whenever I’m around purely Korean people and society. It’s a no-brainer to say that although I feel naturally assimilated amongst people of Korean background, as soon as I open my mouth it becomes very obvious that I don’t fit in, and that’s something – I think – I will always struggle with when I’m around Koreans.

What’s more is the idea of just… being the odd one out. With my colleagues, things were good, because although we all originate from very different backgrounds, we all came together because we were all different. However, in most situations, based on my racial background, I’m often the inherent different one. Nothing ever needs to be said about it, but everyone knows it’s the truth. As usual, the perfect example is my husband’s family, all of which are “just” white Australian, making me stick out in the way we adoptees have always hated. It’s nice for once, to just… not be the odd one out: to be amongst people that are just as much a mixture of culture and identity as I am, adopted or not. And, for me, I found it really interesting to realise that these are the “types” of people I’m the most comfortable being around: people who are also a mixture of racial backgrounds and experiences. I’m not expected to understand every nitty gritty thing about Korean culture, nor am I expected to be “true blue Aussie”. I can just be… me: Korean, Australian, nerdy and… everything in between. Being around others who are just as mixed as I am is more comfortable than being around pure Koreans or pure Australians. Maybe it all just comes down to not being the odd one out for a change.

OK, excuse me. I have to go and do some shopping. We have no food in our house, and Robert and I are intending on making my Mum’s Indian curry recipe tomorrow.

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When is Enough Enough?

A random fact about me: I have always had a fascination with Henry VIII and the Tudors. Ever since I was a child, I just loved the European royals and Henry was always a real life, intriguing fairytale to me. I am currently very much enjoying The Tudors. My husband recently downloaded the first three series for me, and along with reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel at the moment, one might say I have an interest in Henry and his court.

What has this got to do with anything, you might ask? Well, aside from having very little to do with anything that’s come before in this blog, it’s a small demonstration that I do actually have interests outside of my adoption and Korea (OMG! Are you serious?! Yes, my friends, I am.).

Robert and I have both been thinking, lately, that both of us are struggling a bit to: A) Work full time; B) Spend enough time with one another/find common interests between us; C) Find enough time to pursue our own, individual interests and hobbies (of which both of us have many). And I, for one, have begun to find it very difficult to pursue: A) My interests involving Korea/my background/my identity, and B) My interests as… just me: just the things I’m interested in, regardless of who I am, biologically (one of them being Henry).

Many adoptive parents have said to me that I should “just” make the most of my life in Australia and not dwell so much on Korea and what I could have been. My usual response to this is: “don’t tell me to ‘just’ get over this, because it’s so not as simple as you seem to think”. But I’m getting to a point where I’m beginning to wonder whether they’re right, to a degree. When I think of me as just… me (Korean or not), I think of the following things that I like:

~Writing

~Reading

~Playing certain video games

~Baking (when I get the time)

~Spending time in cafes drinking coffee

~Spending time with my husband/best friend

~Seeing my family

~Eating

…nowhere in there does Korea feature. And I’ve been asking myself: if I wasn’t so obviously caught up in my ventures to “learn” more and “find out” about myself, would I just be free to pursue the above list of things? I’m not going to lie: sometimes it’s a burden to “have to” learn Korean. I haven’t studied it for a while now, especially on a regular basis because… I just can’t be bothered. Or I don’t have the time. Or I’d prefer to be doing other things. But I feel like it’s something I have to do: I have to do it to “just” feel more whole as a person… to feel like I have the inherent sense of self that everyone around me has and takes for granted. But what am I missing out on in the process? Sure, I love Korea: I love the language, the culture… but if it weren’t for the fact that I am Korean, would I have these interests to begin with? Honestly… are the APs right – to a degree – when they tell us to “just” get on with the lives we have here? Am I just wasting my time pursuing my “sense of self”?; am I just sacrificing precious time when I could actually be doing things that I would prefer to be doing?

I think, ultimately, it’s these feelings that randomly make me so adverse to adoption, nowadays. Yes, it may seem emo and “oh poor me”-like, but I’m tiring of feeling like half a person: of feeling like I’m forever chasing the person I am, inside, when everyone else simply has it to begin with.

Am I wasting my time on Korea? Should I “just” leave it behind and wholly embrace who I am here? Does the Korean part of my identity simply… not matter? Is it something I’ll ever get back, regardless of the attempts I make? Has Korea really just… clouded the rest of my life?: Made me push away the people and things that I love here? Which one really matters? I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s just mid-week fatigue kicking in, here, but it’s times like these that I just want to throw in the towel and say “I give up on life” (not in a “I’m going to commit suicide way)… I could go for a new one right about now.

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Opposites

This week – although being tiring and long – has also been somewhat stand-out. Robert and I booked flights and accommodation for my first trip back to Korea since I was born. This brought with it (as you can imagine) an influx of emotions. A very strange combination, at that: anxiety, excitement, apprehension, nervousness, worry, anticipation, fear, trepidation, hesitation… Of course I’m looking forward to the “usual” things, like: meeting up with some friends, going to places that don’t exist in Australia, seeing the historical aspects, experiencing the world’s greatest internet, and experiencing my birth culture with my husband. However, it’s also a very scary and strange thought: to think I’ll be in the same country as my birth mother (likely) and to finally see the place of my origin. It’s funny to think that most people just take it for granted that they live in their countries of birth, but I’m only just about to go back to mine for the first time since I was born… Living the life of an adoptee really is so backwards. Which brings me to the main subject of this post…

I think this is something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while, now: the idea of opposites. It briefly came up in the comments in my last post. Like I just said, being an adoptee really is – at times – a backwards type of life. We go without things that others take for granted; we live the lives in cultures that are somewhat “opposite” to the worlds we were originally born in; and most of all, whenever someone mentions or says something about our lives, they’re treading on egg shells because there’s always an opposite side to what they’re saying. Mei Ling has a great way with words. She said:

Whenever someone says that, the opposite side of the coin is not really taken into account because then that’s like saying the child is lucky they weren’t kept by their ‘birth’ parents.

I’ve always wondered where the strange feelings come from when, even now, people say things about me, my birth parents or my adoptive parents. It feels like I’m just constantly on the cusp of saying “but…”, but I don’t know what the whole “but” is. BUT (LOL) now I think I understand: it’s because whenever something does get said, there’s always that other side that either hasn’t been considered, or doesn’t want to be considered. And being an adoptee is hard because we have to deal with both of them. We’re sort of stuck between both sides and it’s really hard to balance out the two, especially when we’re getting told by ignorant know-it-alls how we should and shouldn’t live our lives.

Sometimes life as an adoptee gets tiring. Sometimes I just wish I could throw in the towel and say: “that’s it. I’m sick of being me. I just want to be someone else for a day: just know what it’s like to not have the burden of having to balance out all these sides and invisible arguments that appear to be going on in my head and in my life. Because I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t figure out how to reconcile the clash of ‘sides’ that seem to be warring in my head and in my world”. I just want to be me without the added burden of thinking about where I come from VS who I am here. It’s just not possible.

I think that’s the “problem” I have when I read adoptive parents’ blogs. I know most of these people (not all) are just trying to do what they think is best. I know many of them (like my parents) are good people and genuinely want what’s best for their children, adopted or not. But I can’t help but sit and read them and think ‘while you’re so happy, someone else is mourning. Your child could be mourning without even knowing it’. My heart goes out to the child I once was for not being able to put those feelings into words, and I wish I could just bring everyone together into one big happy family and be… whole. But that won’t ever happen. It can’t happen. My Mum and Dad are here. They’re the people I love and care for. But my biological side is elsewhere. And my birth mother has lost all chance of ever being my “Mum”. She can’t replace my Mum (the one that’s seen me through good times and bad), but my Mum also can’t replace my birth mother: the one that brought me into the world in the first place. Where’s the middle? Where’s the happy medium? Is there such a thing?

To add to all of this, I guess that’s what I abhor about the idea of adoption classes, usually given (to make more money) by adoptive parents. As someone who’s been trained as a teacher, how can you genuinely teach someone anything without having all the knowledge behind you to teach? I feel that adoptive parents teaching from their own experiences is only passing along one side of adoption. It’s biased. Just because you’ve parented an adopted child doesn’t suddenly make you expert enough to teach and charge others money for your one experience. One experience doesn’t mean anything. Parenting and adoption aren’t about 1+1=2. It’s not that simple. You can’t teach something when you’re only coming from one side: one side of many.

In being married, one of the things that has always boggled my mind is just how different Robert and I am. We are the perfect example of opposites attract. Aside from our obvious differences in appearance, our likes and dislikes are completely opposite. Not only that, the way we do things is also completely opposite. It’s always boggled my mind and made me wonder ‘what on earth?! How did we end up together?!’. Furthermore, we were also (apparently) completely different as kids, too. While I wouldn’t move off my Mum’s lap, Robert would be the kid running around like crazy, beating up bigger kids, eating snails, climbing trees etc. He and I are just a strange phenomenon. LOL. But somehow… we work. Somehow we ended up together and (usually) get on really well and still manage to find things to do together.

Usually, I like to think that a happy medium is possible, despite the two very different sides that are at play in my life. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just be one or the other. I don’t discount the pain, anguish and loss that my birth mother went through in adopting me, nor do I simply brush aside the difficulties that adoptive parents must have in taking in foreign children as their own, but when it comes to themselves and their own identities, they – ultimately – know who they are and can take it for granted throughout their day to day lives. One side is Korean. Period. The other is Australian. Period. …What I wouldn’t give to have that sense of self and secure identity. It must be luxurious not to have it playing on one’s mind day in and day out.

Does all this mean I hate my life? No. Does it mean I hate everyone around me? No. Does it mean I hate myself? No. Does it mean I’m an awful, angry, bitter adoptee that isn’t “grateful” every waking moment of her life? In the good sense of “grateful”, no. But this is me. This is my life. These are my challenges. I’m only human, and I can’t help but wonder how my life would be different had I “simply” had that which everyone else around me takes for granted and doesn’t have to give second thought to.

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