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Saturday 24 December 2011

Perspective? The key to healing? No shit.


 I'm sure every one of us at some time or the other has been told to 'think positively'. Apparently thinking positively makes all the difference. I was pondering upon the truth (or the lack of it) in that statement.



  The thing is, how can simply 'thinking positive' change anything? Think about it logically, the situation will still be the same, we will still be stuck in the same place, we aren't really 'getting anywhere' by changing our perspective. That's why I had my reservations about therapy in the first place. I can't understand how talking about your feelings can change the situation in any way. If you want change, you have to do In fact, sometimes I feel that thinking positive is a form of self-deception. It's almost a form of escapism, if you ask me. Imagine this -  an adoptee comes to know that she was abandoned by her birth mother when she was barely 24 hours old. Now, thinking positive, I assume, would involve, thinking that she had her best interests in mind (giving the child a better family, a better life, etc.) But, in doing so, isn't the adoptee actually evading reality? Or evading the possibility that maybe, her birth mother may really have not given a damn. It's harsh, yes. (And yes, the adoptee in question was me.)


  So, is changing one's perspective the key to healing? I don't really know.


  Maybe changing perspective is the catalyst to healing. I feel the key to healing is and always will be - time.


  Hell no, I'm doing it again aren't I! Must. Stop. Over-analysing.




Friday 23 December 2011

Adoption - an excuse for acting out?

  
  Getting help, professional help that is, was the last thing on my mind when I started on my journey of  self-discovery. To be honest, I didn't feel I would need it. Anyway, today's post isn't about therapy. Rather, the beliefs of my adoptive parents towards my issues regarding adoption and towards my therapy.

  I wanted to write about my adoptive parents, more specifically, their attitude towards my feelings on my adoption. I started therapy recently (just had my first session). I started this blog as a means to speak out about how I feel and as a way of examining my own thoughts. My mother, however, just doesn't get it. I honestly don't know why she is making life so difficult for me. I don't believe my therapy is of top priority to her. She basically believes that I don't want to study (I have a major exam coming up in February '12) and that I am using the fact that I'm adopted to get out of doing studies and for acting out. I don't think this is particularly fair of her, I don't think she (or any non-adoptee, for that matter) can ever understand an adoptee's pain.

  Do you guys think I should let her know about this blog? She might just lose her head, thinking that I'm thinking about 'everything except studies' etc. (Indians are strange people, studies and marks are of more importance to them than finding oneself, or understanding the meaning of one's existence, trying to achieve real happiness, etc.)


Thursday 22 December 2011

The hollowing emptiness


  I am sure that most of you would be aware that an adopted person feels a baffling sense of loss and incompleteness. I am a teenager, battling the 'identity-formation' years! People (want to) believe that this is just a 'phase' which one outgrows on reaching adulthood. But the reality is that being adopted means being completely cut off completely from half of oneself. We basically do not know the parts of our personalities which is a product of genetics, and that is a very huge loss. With all due respect to adoptive parents, no amount of love can truly heal that loss. That loss has to be worked through by oneself, as I am learning already in my first session with my therapist. It feels like having a leg amputated (with respect to people who have really got their leg amputated), in the sense, you know that that part of you does exist but you just don't have it in front of you. All the same, you can't simply wish it away, you have to accept that it was there, it did exist, but it doesn't anymore. Sometimes you feel a ghost pain in that phantom limb, it is pretty much the same in adoption. In adoption ofcourse, that birth family very much exists, but to us it almost doesn't due to lack of records and general attitude of people. And, those feelings of hurt and loss feel like the phantom pain of an amputee, because we are deeply missing someone and longing for someone whom we have no conscious memory of. Damn right, it can be frustrating.




Tuesday 20 December 2011

Speaking it out



  Being adopted is tough, and especially so in a country where adoption is still a nascent concept and where the only type of adoptions are closed adoptions. Even more so when adoptees are rare. For one, I don't know a single one in my friend circle (or even my acquaintance-circle!) It can get extremely lonely, yes. I tried recently to speak about my feelings to social workers. Big mistake! As they generally facilitate adoptions, they are biased towards it being a great thing, and tend to view it as an amazing thing, a tidy little solution to a three-party problem (the birth mother who needs to place her child in a loving home, the child who needs a home, and the adoptive parents who want a child.)

  Unfortunately, all social workers sound the same to me. It can get extremely frustrating. See, they don't view adoption as potentially upsetting situation for the adoptee. And, the adoptees who voice their feelings of turmoil get labelled as 'emotionally disturbed' and 'in dire need of counselling' etc. No one takes it seriously. All I ask is for respect for our sentiments and the decency not to classify us in rigid little compartments.

The social workers told me some nonsense like :

- that I should continue writing ( I write), and eat and sleep enough (Thankyou very much, I'm 17, I think I know that.)

- that it's a phase and it will pass (okay fine, but what am I to do till it passes? Just wait? Impossible! And to me, it doesn't feel as if it is going to pass)

-that I should accept it (why should I?? It's unfair. It's like punishing someone who has done no wrong and expecting him to accept it!)

-that I should forgive my birth mother (this has nothing to do with her, it's about me and my feelings and my pain, it has nothing to do with her so just drop it!)

Have any of you felt the same, or experienced the same?




Here and now


  I have been thinking about my adoption, and I think the main cause for the current of pain and anger which has risen in me is due to the 'uncertainty' of being adopted. Sure, it is all done with, people believe that if you are adopted, and that the adoption was a good one and if you got two loving parents, it is all okay. But that's not true. Adoption doesn't end at the act of handing a baby over to biological strangers and pretending it is a 'happily ever after'. Adoption is not a theory, or an event, it is a process. It didn't happen to me, it is happening to me. I don't say I was adopted, I say I am adopted. It is here and now. We are living through the process of adoption every single day. The fear, the uncertainty, the gratitude, the pain, the feeling of being 'lost', the longing for what can never be ours but which should have been, the conflict, etc. it is all happening now. 


  Does that even make sense? It's all happening right now. Damn I feel so suicidal, trapped inside my own head sometimes.


The journey of an adoptee - a tapestry of emotion


  In spite of being an introvert, it doesn't translate into my being 'okay' with having no one to talk to about being adopted. In fact, it adds to my intense loneliness. The myriad hues of emotion are best explored with someone else. There are painful feelings about having an entire family 'out there', one which I may never know. In fact, I wake up at night sometimes in cold panic thinking of the unspeakable possibility of DYING without ever knowing my biological family. I feel guilty too, I have a great family, hand-picked by 'god' (if you will), I couldn't have chosen a better one myself. But, the angst and burning anguish just don't go.


  Is there anyone out there in a similar trench of anguished melancholy? Maybe the knowledge that we are in this together may ease things a little for all of us. 


Monday 19 December 2011

Journey of an adoptee - the beginning

Hello, thanks for dropping by!


I have decided to ease my story out in installments, one post at a time, stay with me. I will write about my first and basic stumbling block in my journey as an adoptee.


Due to the nature of this issue, I have never really mentioned this fact to anyone, not even close friends. As a result I don't have anyone to talk to about the intense feelings which seem to be surfacing now, in my tumultuous teens.
 When people begin contemplating their unique status as an adoptee, sadness is perhaps the primary and most devastating emotion that comes up. Followed in due course by anger, depression, hopelessness, etc. In my case, I have experienced only extreme anger or rage, and intense emptiness which threatens to overpower me. No sadness at all, maybe it's lonliness in disguise. Hell, I don't know...


I only wish my words were dark, strong, hard, stinging and bitter enough to express the fire inside me. I feel at times the blind, raw rage withing will claw its way out of me and turn me into a homicidal maniac. Madness is like gravity, it only needs a little push.