Decisions

Some days I just feel blue, and my mind swims around in the fog and tries to attach itself to something solid to explain why I feel down. Ideas flit here and there and occasionally I feel like I am nearing an idea or a conclusion or a definition, but never actually get a firm hold on it. Most of the time my unhappiness is revolving around my father and in a related sense the decision of my adoptive parents to keep the truth about me from me. It makes me so sad to think about the lost opportunity to know him. I am trying as best as I can to know him through the eyes of others who knew him, but in a way that is a terrible tease that can never be relieved. Then I feel angry because I wouldn’t feel this way at all if they had just told me, even when I became an adult. I could still have known him for 10 years before he died. It makes me feel frustrated and angry to think they didn’t know me well enough to know I would have wanted to know, or honored me enough to accept that I deserved to know. Or maybe they knew that and just were too stubborn to change their mind about the decision they made when I was an infant. It’s all so unfair – all of these monumental decisions made that affect me that I never even had a chance to consider how I might feel about it, let alone participate in the decision.

I do believe there was no malice in the decision, and that they probably truly felt it was best for them and for me. In that light I can accept it, but still comfort with it eludes me. I think that is also because I can’t find a way to reconcile how my adoptive parents thought about my biological parents and how they must have disregarded any potential for pain they might have. If the APs believed that the BPs were just irresponsible children who wouldn’t give a second thought to the baby they created, that feels like a harsh judgment, and -the more I learn about both of them – an unfair and simply wrong one. If they believed my BPs were better than that but that they would just move on with their lives and forget all about me, that feels like a negative assessment on me – that I am easily forgotten. Transferable.  And also that I would never have any feelings about it, or right to even know.

It seems to me that the way adoption was practiced in this country (and still is, to some extent), the only parties that actually have any rights are the adoptive parents. They are the only ones whose feelings are considered, and they are the ones who are protected by law and by practice. And it’s just not fair.

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