Useless.

In  a recent conversation with an Italian friend, a novel concept was brought to light. He knew I was adopted, but we had never really discussed the subject at length. It’s just something that doesn’t exist in the same capacity in Italy, so unless we are discussing my particular situation, it’s unlikely to ever come up. Due to the impending visit from my birth family, however, I felt like talking. Andrea, as always, was willing to listen. Our relationship is mostly academic- we compare and analyze various linguistic concepts- never tiring of marveling over the ways our two different languages break down and compare. I always want to better my Italian, and he is just as eager to better his English. But in that moment, we decided to discuss something far less concrete. Why was I nervous about having my birthparents visit? And perhaps more crucially: why on earth were they visiting in the first place, after they had placed me for adoption?


I couldn’t explain it. Not immediately, not in the way I wanted too. My gut response was “but…they are my biological parents. They made me. How can that not be important?” Andrea didn’t see it. Sure, they created me. But that’s “ALL” they did. People have sex all the time. People have babies all the time. The act of reproduction, in and of itself, is not all that special or significant, at least not on any larger scale. It’s all so common. What’s NOT common, however, is the next step. Having a baby and then giving it away. The act of “giving” is very skewed in an adoption context. It’s not common, and it’s not what is generally considered “natural”. The purposeful separation of mother and child goes against all our primal instincts, all of our hearts desires and innate reactions. What mother or father wants to leave their baby, and what baby wants to be left?


And so it is not the creating or the having or the producing that is complex. It is the leaving. It is the separation. It is not what my birthparents DID, that confuses everyone. It’s what they DIDN’T do. I was conceived and born, just as every other child in the world. But that is where I separate from the rest. That is where we, as adoptees and birthparents, separate. There are some days when I feel like this loss, the fact that the people who created me and whose blood I share did not want to raise me, is so deep that  I can never escape it.  And on some level I know that it can never go away. Nothing can ever make me their child again. Not even the best, longest, most well planned out reunion in the world. I will forever be that baby- conceived but not wanted, born but not welcomed, with a mother and father but no parent to be found. 


And so as the visit with my birth family approaches, and I grapple to understand what it will mean for out relationship, I am filled with a sense of rage, of sadness, of compassion, and confusion. What have they done? What have I done? What could they have done, what could have been different, what quality could I have possessed that would have changed the outcome? 


I know that it is not my fault. I know that I was not given away for other people to raise because I was bad, ugly, stupid, or worthless. But its hard, some days, to feel worthy. I know that the life I have created for myself, the life that my adoptive family and I share, has worth. I know that it is special, irreplaceable, and I know that I am loved. But on a primal level, on the level of my being, I feel that I am lacking. And why is that surprising? Was it not for my very existence that I was cast-off into the world and out of the family who brought me into it?


How do we reunite, the leaving and the left? Why do we reunite? Sometimes I feel like reunification gave me the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the piece of myself that I lost. Other times I feel like it is just a superficial bandage on a wound too profound to ever heal completely. Or possibly, as my friend pointed out, I'm trying to heal a wound that isn't really there to begin with.