This is my life

I grew up with tons of other adoptees. I counted that it was about fifty. I knew them from school, from sports, from the neighborhood. Before having the whole puberty talk, I was still largely convinced that babies came from the orphanage. In high school, I was still mildly surprised to see that my Asian friends had Asian parents. My family had adoptees in several places on the family tree. My great aunt had adopted three children and she was close with my mom so when the time was right, my parents made the decision to begin the adoption process.

Back then and for the next two decades, China was thought to have the paragon of a clean, ethical international adoption program. Even now, you will be hard-pressed to convince any of the families I know that birthparents were not willingly abandoning their baby girls in droves but were forced to hand their babies to the police or midwives, etc.

I love being adopted. It was my fun fact for most of those ice breakers and it never bothered me. We had so many adoptees in the area that it was pretty normal. The Chinese school even opened up a special class for the adoptees to learn Chinese as children--stuff like that. We were a part of the community. I grew up in a diverse area so I had friends from different backgrounds. I was never made fun of for my ethnicity or my adoption.

I never felt left out of being Asian American. I strongly identify with being Asian/Chinese American and I'm just as Chinese as any of my Chinese American friends. They don't speak Mandarin and neither do I. We adoptees are growing older now, some nearing our wedding days, some buying cars and houses and giving birth. It is ironic that so much of Chinese adoption is being revisited now when we are coming into our own--and everyone suddenly wants to give their two cents about our lives without giving us an ear.

Being adopted is, in my opinion, not a personality. It is a facet of my identity. I don't need to shout it from the hills or hide it. I cannot imagine being any other way. I love my family and I love my birthfamily and we are one large family, even if we are still searching for one another. 

I grow tired and frustrated of people shouting about my life simply because my parents are white (they can't help that they're white, you know) and I feel like I am a part of a demographic in its own right. I know so many other families just like mine. It doesn't mean we all like each other because *surprise* we are all just people. Ordinary people.

So I am trying my best to not do a song and dance and scream "I'm grateful" because then I might have to vomit. I'm not an advocate or an expert. I am simply an adoptee who is becoming increasingly unsatisfied with the obstacles society slaps in her path: whether it's a bomb being flung from the right or left, from the racist or the woke, I am so utterly unhappy with my narrative being twisted every which way from Sunday and think, "I must set the record straight. I must assert my kind of existence online." Because, if it isn't online, it is as if it doesn't exist.