I Am Adopted and I Refuse to be Defined that Way

I would like to state that I am adopted. Yes, this well put together individual is a product of adoption in the United States. It’s an important area of discussion and understanding yet left to the wayside since adopted children are a relatively small number, yet growing. The reason I bring this up is that adopted children might a higher chance of mental disorders. That’s a little messed up, I think. Our parents who adopted us have unfortunately inherited a possible bundle of confounding issues.

With Planned Parenthood, the pro-life/pro-choice debate, adoption has become a focal point in our society more and more because the United States always needs people to draft, just in case. But seriously, the effects that adoption has on children or even young adults, myself included, is quite a place to explore.

For instance, I always knew I was adopted. In high school, I hated my birth parents because my mom wouldn’t raise me with my father because she wanted a better life for me and he seemed to have life planned out in a way. Now I see that my father, while he might mean well, is an asshole. He will post at times on Facebook that are jabs at my mom for giving me a better life. Am I well off though; yes and no, though I may seem it. We all have baggage and I am now trying to deconstruct my own.

After the hate toward my mom, I was relatively fine. Then they all contacted me when I was 19 and in college. I was overjoyed but subconsciously I think I started to unravel. These people were flooding back and I had mostly set my identity based on the life I had been living. After that, I did sort of well in college until a series of mishaps happened. It’s the tried and true, I turned 21 and started drinking, I had a crappy break-up (See you at the wedding in November!), and I fell into a deep funk. Was that because my other family came back? Who knows? I hate to say it might have because I don’t like hurting people unless they need a reality check and this is not a reality check. They meant well but I think deep down it threw me off.(*disclaimer* I, in no way shape or form, blame anyone in my life for any of this, these are my thoughts on research and my realizations. I love them all very much and am thankful for them even though I can be an asshole at times.)

There have been found certain issues with post-adopted persons that I think I will delve into:

Loss and Grief

We experience grief by the aspect that we may have lost someone or something with our identity, appearance or whatever else may be there. I have never been worried about looking like my adoptive parents. If I could look unique, I’ll take that over looking totally like someone else. I may have experienced this because I can tell you that sometimes I look up at the sky at night and think, “That feels kind of like home.” However, I think that is much more of an existential longing than a grief sort of thing.

Identity Development

Ah, identity development, the bane of pretty much my entire generation right now. I was unaware that there were stages of this until my parents ran into the issue of my little brother dealing with things. Seems there are five phases ranging from ignoring the fact to accepting it completely. They say for the first part that you don’t overly acknowledge the issues. The thing is I never really had issues except for that time in high school. The rest of the time was typical high school angst; that want to fit in with your peers yet not giving a fuck what they thought and so on and so forth. At that point in time and until I turned 19 or 20, I had a loose yet basically firm grasp on who I was.

I imagine that is when fully the third stage hit, where it overwhelmed me but I didn’t really think about it consciously. Though I will admit that at times I laugh at the adage that women marry men that remind them of their father and men marry women who are like their mothers. I did wonder about that for a while. Which characteristics am I looking for and which mother is it? Now? Eh, I take things as they come, I go for the girls I am attracted to, and there are very few similarities to either mother. That is one for the home team of rebellion! I imagine I am in the fourth state where I am trying to understand it so I can accept it, but as you’ll see at the end, I am doing something a tad different.

Self-Esteem

According to the research, adopted children have low self-esteem stemming from the loss of parents because they feel like they may have been rejected, different, etc. I will admit that sometimes I feel this way but it’s more in relation to how shallow our society has become, as well as how banal and dumb it feels. I embrace being different as well as sometimes get really anxious and nervous about it but that may be because I’m in Cypress again and there’s a certain “charm” to being from Cypress. By the way, you suck Cypress, just saying. Anyway, my self-esteem issues stem from me being someone who over thinks and is terribly uncomfortable in my skin, but I’m working on that and I was doing much better when I lived in Tampa.

Intimacy and Relationships

To the real problems, that everyone wants to understand, intimacy and relationships! Personally, I love identity but this is a close second. Yes, I have intimacy issues, no, not in a sexual nature. Do I feel close relationships? No, but I have run from three major possible ones in my life. The others, well the bad break-up initiated by her and my fall can go to my unconscious fear of abandonment, hooray! However, the relationships that didn’t happen, well that’s mostly I thought I was not the best guy because these girls were gorgeous and I was an average looking mook.

In addition, I am AWFUL at reading signs of attraction from women, but that is not an adoption issue. So yes, outside of identity, this is a major hurdle for me. The three possible relationships? I freaked out on one while we were messing around and we ended up hooking up one night a couple of years later and then she found a wonderful guy. That’s my bad. The second liked me our freshmen year and she was awesome but I let my feelings that I wasn’t the guy for her get in the way. She was very punk with the fishnet stockings, tattoos, colored hair, everything I find really cool and I just thought I wasn’t cool enough because I’m dumb, ha. The last one I have known for years, we have had this weird on and off thing going on, and I ran when she was going to take off and come to Texas. I told her not to do that since she was in school and not to throw her life away because of me. Man that was dumb because I was being honest but I was also scared I would have totally messed that up. Now, well let us just say she ran this time and we’re in that weird phase. What happens next? We’ll see but right now, I’m just ready for our weird period to end.

Obviously, relationships are my worst area, who knew?!

In Conclusion

To sum it up, I am finally coming to those final stages of true acceptance of my adoption but in incredibly off ways than what it seems researchers tend to say it should happen. For one, I, right now, refuse to let my identity be controlled by the fact that I am aware I am adopted by either family. I am who I am and that’s who I’m going to be even if I’m still figuring that out. What I have to do now is reconcile both parts of who I am (which I’m nearly done with) then throw them away so to speak and be Josh. This is to everyone, none of this matters, be who you are whether you’re adopted or not or whether you fit in or not. It’s whatever, and being hung up on this shit can really mess you up for a while.

Second, I’m going to ignore ANY of this research to the best of my ability because I have depression, I do have an occasional drinking problem but I can function and it might be because of adoption but I think it’s just who I am. Right now, I am more trying to reconcile the life we were told by people we would have against what the economy and everything says. Time to suck that up and just move within it as I had before I let this get to be a huge snafu within my head. It’s not worth it; more worth me doing what I do, what I love and go with the flow. I move with a strange fluidity in life, sometimes I’m estranged from it and people for a period of time, but they’re always on my mind and in my heart until I flow back in. I like who I am (most of the time). I am a mix of chaos and calm and when I’m on my game, you better watch out because I can do things that even blow me away.

Finally, with the attachment issues, I can’t let, “oh I’m adopted that’s why,” be my final say on why things have happened the way they have. Yes, I do have some issues of attachment but I also, as seen, attach pretty well to people for long hauls. I may fuck them up sometimes, sometimes I haven’t, but they almost always tend to reconcile. One thing is for sure, I have found one attachment that for now (and I’d like possibly forever) transcends what most of us have ever hoped for. That may change if I find another person I can become that attached to but if not, I seem to find ways to be lucky enough to give a big middle finger to life and exist on my terms. So…adopted folks have issues but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be controlled by them whether that means by seeking help or just writing it out and deciding how you will live your life.

I may be adopted but I’ll be damned if that, like society, ever defines me as who I am. Let Josh Shudra be Josh Shudra, and let you be you with all of your angels and demons. That’s the definition that matters at all. The past can’t be changed, the future we can play with, and the future really doesn’t exist until you wake up the next morning and then it’s just the present. So let’s have some fun and put two oars in the water, our generation needs to get moving again.

Sources

http://www.adoptionsupport.org/res/indexcorea.php

http://www.adoptionservices.org/raising_your_child_family/adoption_emotional_issues.htm

http://www.originsnsw.com/mentalhealth/id4.html