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Protected: My Characters’ Faces: A Writing Update

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Belonging and Isolation

This may be one of my last public posts for a while. At the risk of sounding ridiculously over-dramatic, I believe I am still linked on this “Family Petey” blog, regardless of my post asking to please be removed from it, or to be given access to it. Although protecting many posts would probably be hypocritical and going against the ideal that adoption information and insights should be shared amongst many people involved with adoption, I am somewhat annoyed to be excluded from a blog when it’s clearly obvious that I’m being spoken about. I don’t appreciate it, I think it’s rude and it’s also disrespectful. If these people have access to my experiences and thoughts, I feel it’s only fair to be given access to their blog, or at least have contact details of them. It’s not always easy to confront adoption issues and feelings, nor is it easy to make them available to complete strangers. So I won’t be making the entirety of this blog protected, but I will probably make a lot more posts protected, at least for a while. For those that are human enough to treat me as such, please don’t hesitate to contact me for said password. And I thank those that do treat me as anything but an information machine and for talking about and sharing your adoption journeys and stories with me. I think that’s what families should be about. At least partially.

*****

Anyway, today I read this article here about quite a large adopted family, and the adoptees’ experiences in going back to Korea. In it, they mention the idea that we adoptees don’t really fit in anywhere. We don’t really fit in with our Caucasian societies, but it can be even worse when we merely attempt to assimilate with those of our natural heritage:

“She’s just a white girl; a banana; she doesn’t really get it; Maree is brainwashed and really not like us,” were some of the things her Asian peers used to describe her, Maree said.

I – along with many other adoptees, I’m sure – can totally relate to this sentiment. And I’ve written about it in here quite often. I think it is possibly one of the worst things about being adopted: not *really* belonging anywhere. Sure, we “belong” with the people that love us etc, but really, that only goes for when we’re inside our comfortable homes. Once we step out our front doors, it’s a completely different story. People don’t know us, so we just automatically “belong” in whatever groups we look like. And that goes for everyone, adopted or not. What’s different from adoptees is that we don’t truly belong in the groups we look like. Nor is belonging in those groups something we can “just” learn. I cannot walk into a Korean person’s home, automatically begin speaking the language and “doing” the “normal” Korean customs and ways. I’m not going to lie: I hate coming up against Korean people. I hate the feeling I get when they speak to me in Korean, expect me to speak back, then get completely perplexed when I don’t. I hate the looks I get, and I hate the obvious assumptions that are so loud in my ears without them saying a word at all. Truly, I hate it.

Equally, I hate it when people that aren’t Korean make the same assumptions of me, only… backwards. I hate it when they ask me if I speak Korean. I hate it when they look at me when I speak in perfect, unbroken English. And I hate it when they say racist things in front of me without even knowing it.

Hate. Yes, it’s a strong word, but there you go. Sometimes I hate being adopted for these things. For not belonging to any one group.

‘Who cares?’ you think. ‘Just be yourself’ you think. HA. You try “being yourself” when “yourself” isn’t up to par with everyone’s standards. I don’t hate myself, but I wouldn’t say I’m perfectly happy with myself, either. Sometimes it’s like constantly wearing clothes that just don’t fit you. Are you going to walk around in clothes that are overly tight, loose or just plain uncomfortable? No. But luckily for you, clothes can be stripped off to be changed for others. Your skin and outside appearance can’t. Not without a lot of pain, anyway.

Quite frankly, this not-belonging thing is tiring and lonesome. (And I wonder why I’m such a homebody? *Scoff*) I honestly just tire of it. And I wish I could “just” be like everyone else, at times.

So… where do adoptees belong?

You know what I wish sometimes? Sometimes I think to myself: ‘how wonderful would it be: for all the interracial adoptees in the world to come together, go find some uninhabited island and populate it: create our very own race of people that look like something, but are completely different on the outside’. As unrealistic as that is, it’s a crazy fantasy, but it would be great. And truthfully, I think adoptees – in some sense – belong with other adoptees. I mean, what makes people of one race “belong” at all? Isn’t it because they share a set of experiences, outside appearances and cultural understandings? Yes, yes and yes, I’d say. Who shares adoptees’ unique experiences in life: other adoptees, right? Really, it comes down to this sharing thing. For me, Korean people can’t really relate past my external appearance. Sure, I have the “squinty”, Asian eyes; the dark hair; the short stature; the pale-ish skin… but underneath, what do I have? I have understandings of A, B, C;  eating with knives and forks; surviving on pasta, steak and BBQs; and the list goes on… I don’t wholly share anything with anyone… except for other adoptees.

Following my recent post on siblings, wouldn’t it, therefore, make sense to adopt more than one child? And if you’re not doing as such, at least have a lot to do with other adopted families? I mean, think about your own life: you live your culture day by day: it’s something you don’t think about as you drive to work everyday, talk to your colleagues everyday and go shopping. Why should anything be different for adoptees? Why should we be reminded of our adoptions all the time? Why shouldn’t we have the luxury of just… not having to think about it and be reminded of our differences everyday? Why shouldn’t we have lots of people around us who have just inherently shared our experiences of the world and our lives?

Food for thought? Maybe… for newly adoptive parents. But where does that leave us “old” adoptees? To just go mad over our inherent isolation? Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just quit my job, go live in the sticks and write in an emo corner for the rest of my life. Sounds pretty good to me. =P 

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Writing Book Blog

I considered starting a whole new blog for this, but I don’t really want to. So I’m going to sort of incoporate a bit of a writing blog here, where I’ll blog about this process of writing a novel/memoir. Updates won’t be too regular, and many of them will probably be password-protected because I think writing opens up a lot of personal stuff that I don’t really want to display to the world. The password will probably also be different to the password used for my usual protected posts, so if you’d like to read about my processes of writing an adoption book/memoir/novel, please contact me for the password. I may also post the occasional excerpt, which I definitely don’t want open to the public.

As this post is (obviously) public, I’m just going to say right now that I have 6000 words and for once, I’m pretty happy with those rough 6000 words, and have no intention of starting all over again. Again. So yay! I’ve been writing a bit a day (I only wish I had more time to do so!). And a random thing about me: I write really well in cafes. I get a lot done in cafes. Dunno what it is about cafes, but they’re just very writerly places for me.

It sucks that making a career as a novelist is rather difficult. But I wish I could. It would be the best thing ever.

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“Family Petey”

According to my beloved WordPress stats, a blog known as “Family Petey” has me linked. This blog is apparently only open to invited readers. Does anyone read this blog? If the owner of this blog is reading this, can you please give me access to your blog or stop linking me? Sorry, this may sound harsh, but I find it a little… unfair (?) that you/someone’s obviously linking my blog/saying something about me, yet denying me access to that information.

Like I said, if the owner of that blog is reading this, please give me access to your blog or stop linking me. Thanks.

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Money, “Saving a Child”, Know-it-Alls and Adoption

I’ve mentioned this before in this blog, but my parents adopted me to have a family. Period. Many couples adopt children to have families of their own, and in all honesty, I’m pretty fine with that. Without those intentions of my parents, they wouldn’t have a family, I wouldn’t be here with them, and my sister… well… who knows if she would have even been born! Sure, this raises its own set of issues for me, as an adoptee, but ultimately, I just know I have a family and I’m in Australia because, well… I’m my parents’ daughter and they love me, yadda yadda yadda. One thing, however, that I’ve never really come to terms with is the money. Sometimes I think about adoption and think: ‘well… technically, I was bought. What’s the difference between me and mail order brides?’. The only difference being that I really had no say in my coming here, just as no one has any choice in whether they’re born or not. But it’s still hard to reconcile: the fact that you’re bought. But fine. Whatever. Not much I can do about that now.

One other thing I’ve also said in this blog many times, is that I don’t think anyone can really be an authority in adoption. I think it’s so multi-faceted that although we often think we’re in good positions to spout our knowledge and believe we know a lot, how can we really know everything when there are just too many experiences, sides and points of view to be taken into consideration? Part of the reason why I have this blog is to share my knowledge with others who are involved with adoption. I think my parents and adoptive parents that came before them didn’t have the internet and the ease of information accessibility that parents have today. I enjoy sharing my experiences with people who may be interested, and I enjoy sharing it for free.

One reason – that I believe, as an adoptee – that’s wrong for adopting a child is the idea of saving a child. What’s wrong with that? you may ask. There are many needy children in the world, why not be a western “saint” and save one out of the many? We should all do good deeds, right? Well… yes… but… no. When my parents tell me (as they always have) that they adopted me to have a family, I sort of think ‘yeah, OK. Cool’. If they said to me: “we adopted you because we wanted to save a needy, orphaned child from a country less fortunate than ours”, I’m… not really sure what I’d think.

One thing that I think adoption has given me (aside from the obvious) is the ability to think about things that others simply take for granted or don’t consider at all. I’ve often wondered what life would have been like, had I not been adopted; been adopted by another family; been adopted to another country; been aborted. There are so many different paths my life could have taken before I was even a day old, and I’ve been aware of that for as long as I can remember. Throughout my whole life, if my parents had told me that I was adopted for the sake of being “saved”, some thoughts I probably would have had through life would have been:

~I needed saving? What from? Was/is Korea so bad?

~What was so bad about my birth family?

~What was/is wrong with me that I didn’t naturally deserve a “fortunate” life in Korea?

~What position were my parents in to decide that I needed “saving” in the first place? Where did they get the knowledge and insight from that made them think I was in the position to be “saved”?

~Saving assumes a hero. Am I just a tool in order to make someone else look heroic in the eyes of those around me?

“Saving” a child assumes in-depth knowledge about the child’s origins from the adoptive parent. Why? Because in order to “save” something, you need to understand what it is you’re taking them away from.

A rather infamous adoption blogger has quoted on their blog:

We wanted to “save” a child, providing a home for a child we were told would otherwise not have one.

One of the first reactions I have to this is: ‘how are your children going to feel when you tell them this’? I’m not going to bother linking the person that said the above. Why? Because generally, I’m not a fan of this person’s stance on adoption; their know-all attitude; and the fact that they think they’re in the position to charge people money for information and knowledge about adoption that, I think, should simply be available to people for free. But I can only feel for their children, because although I’m only one in many, it’s likely I wouldn’t have the positive opinions of my parents that I have today. Like I’ve said often, adoptees are not things. We are not research specimens, we are not tools to be used to make someone else look heroic, but we are human. We have histories, stories, biological families and relatives, cultural heritage and individual personalities.

In regards to the above blogger, also, the idea of charging people money for adoption information emphasises the idea that adoption is in existence as a business, as any other money-making scheme. I’m sorry, but I like to think that I was adopted to be my parents’ daughter, to be loved by them just as my younger sister (their biological child) is. In addition to what I’ve said above, I’m not a commodity. I’m not something that was just sold off a shelf, nor am I just something that can be mass produced for the sake of adults who are too caught up in their money-making ventures to realise they’ve adopted children. I was born with just as many living cells, organisms and organs as anyone else. I was not produced on a factory’s conveyor belt to be sold and kept as a thing. If you’re making money out of adoption, how are you going to explain that to your children? Hmm…

In conclusion (I could write more, but I have some ironing to do!), I don’t really think anyone’s in the position to spout knowledge as though they’re the “master”. Nor do I think they should charge money for information that should be available to everyone. I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about the wider adoption industry (as it will), but isn’t it right for everyone – adoptees included – to simply be treated as… well… human? Not a thing. The more you think you know everything, the more you treat your child like just another item on your display shelf.  Furthermore, adopting a child doesn’t make you a saint. It doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a parent. Like the millions of others out there. It puts you in a position of responsibility for the rest of your life. It doesn’t put you in the position to show off and suddenly think you’re an expert, because you’re not. Nor are you the first to be in that position. It makes me sad to see certain people adopting children (who have already experienced a lot in their short lives). But then again… would we adoptees even exist if the world were perfect?

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