Choosing to Seek My Own Happiness

Across time, in many different forms, people have always talked about pursuing happiness. I've always felt guilty about it, maybe because somewhere along the way, happiness became a form of self-indulgence in our culture. Why should we be happy when someone else is not? What makes me so important that my needs matter? We are always taught that OTHERS come first. Especially for women. We above the Me. What can I do for my fellow man? How may I help you?

How can something so good become so demonized?

People talk about "self-care" and "mental health days," as if there needs to be a gigantic body of psychological and scientific proof to justify why one might possibly need to think of themselves once in a while.

For adoptees, there is a historical culture of having to be a grateful orphan. Why should we want anything in life? We've been "saved." We shouldn't be greedy and god forbid desire something. That's how all the stories go: You start getting greedy and everything disappears. I'm not sure how many other adoptees really believed this, or if I was just too literal. For as long as I can remember, I've always been very reluctant to tell my parents what I wanted or needed. My Christmas list was always three items long, stupid things, like "I want a rubber ball." And my mom just thought I was absolutely crazy. She couldn't understand that I felt like I was undeserving of the things my friends and neighbors had because I was not biologically related to her. I wouldn't tell her when I was out of toothpaste as a kid because I felt like I was bothering her. Stuff like that. My other adoptee friends similarly hid things like that from their parents.

Orphans don't get wishes. That's just something that floats around in society, in television plot-lines, and in old novels. It's having to be satisfied and thankful for every single second you have on this earth, pushing down your own desires, wishes, and wants, because you felt like your own parents chose not to keep you because you were deficient or terrible. Obviously, this doesn't jive with most explanations about what really went on in China, but emotionally, I still feel very much "left." I find myself trying to please everyone around me, trying to make everybody else happy.

I'm starting to realize that I haven't been acting out of a desire to maximize my happiness. (Will this spark joy?) Instead, I've been acting almost entirely out of fear. If I do this or don't do this, what are the consequences? Will my family leave me? If I don't make people happy, will they hurt me? And when I've finally established that my system of keeping "safe" from family separation and surviving is interfering with my quality of life, I find myself at a loss for what I really want. I guess because I always felt like, what I wanted most, I could never have. Because orphans don't get to want things.

That doesn't mean I haven't ever wanted things before or haven't gotten them. Despite my dismal Christmas lists, my parents still showered me with gifts. I still got the smart phone I wanted. Don't get me wrong, I don't live in a cupboard under the stairs. It just means that I felt like if I was good enough, if I never tried to make myself happy, if I only lived as a receptacle for other people's pain, if I only was thankful or grateful enough, I'd have enough credit to my name to ask God for my birthmom. That's not how life works though. No one else operates in my weird fantasy world, where good is rewarded and bad is punished. Even my concept of good is only molded by who wields the cattle prod at the time. My own internal moral compass was superseded for years in lieu of trying to please others. For instance, sharing study guides just to avoid being bullied, even though I knew it wasn't fair for me to provide notes to students who decided to watch Netflix during class.

So what do I really want?
I got into the university I wanted. But was that a wish really granted? Because I feel like I've scraped and worked for that for many years. I'd go to bed at 5 am just studying or doing homework. My standardized test scores were in the 98% percentile. It was part hard work, part luck...but it wasn't a wish on a magic lamp.

What else do I want?
I want to be happy. Don't I deserve that? (But dear, it's not about deserving.)
I want so many things so badly. I want the truth of what happened to me in China. I want to know my siblings. I want to know my name. I...

I want to pursue my own happiness without justifying why.