Journal Entry, Late February 2022

Part I. 

I, like many adoptees, have a fixation on my birthmother.

I think about her often, probably more than people think. As a child, she was my everything. I wondered why I wasn't good enough to be kept and if she thought long and hard about which baby needed to be abandoned. I know now that this is a lie.

It feels melodramatic to say, "My entire life has been a lie." But that's how it feels.

"Well, you know how China had that whole One Child Policy thing? Well, that sort of spurred an entire black market where babies were obtained under coercion and trafficked for profit into internationally adopting orphanages. Because adoptive parents had to pay this whole "donation" thing that orphanage directors totally used to help the orphans and not, you know, buy a sports car. Not to mention that money that would continue to pour in from well-wishing families thinking they were "helping" orphans instead of an institution that creates orphans. Anyway...so I was taken from my family and then trafficked and sold to an orphanage and then I was lovingly adopted by my parents who knew none of this. Then I was raised to believe I was abandoned like garbage in a very "loving way" of course in a special "curated" spot so I would totally be found before the elements took me...and that really does a number on your self-esteem growing up. Surrounded by orphan narratives of having to be "grateful" for even being alive and having a family...well, you see, when I learned that I wasn't really abandoned and that I wasn't really ever unloved and that really, many birthfamilies had zero choice and did the best they could with the zero options they had...it doesn't seem at all melodramatic to say "My life has been a lie.""

It's all hypothetical though, having this "birthfamily." Except that they are absolutely not imaginary. The one thing that I've been thinking about lately is the fact I have siblings. I knew this always. It is called the One Child Policy, and I can do the math. But what we didn't know was that many birthfamilies raised multiple children, and the One Child Policy was a really great misnomer.

I'm getting older now. I'm a full-fledged adult. I can have a family. I'm probably older than my birthmom was when I was taken from her or handed to a trusted acquaintance who had "an agreement" with an orphanage. My siblings are not imaginary children. They are likely my age. Twenty-something. I might be an aunt by now and I don't even know them.

Everything about my life has been so singular.

The One Child Policy and then being an only child. It's hard to think about there being more. My family has always been so concerned with family separation, especially of twins in foster care. They put specifically on the paperwork that they would be open to twins from China. But they didn't know that twins were being forcefully separated as infants, sent in different directions through the trafficking circles. They didn't give a fuck about us. Whatever "God's plan" or "special, chosen, happy, loved," bullshit the adoption agency rammed down your throats like gavage, the truth is that adoption is an industry and babies are the merchandise. Whether anyone likes it not, intentions mean shit. When there are vulnerable populations, and babies tend to fit the bill, who cannot protest, cannot speak, cannot advocate for themselves, there will be abuse. Isn't that just common sense? And babies are themselves a commodity. Who wouldn't come to the aid of a crying baby?

What people don't understand is that this was not known back in the day, when China's adoption program was at its peak. There were no news stories about orphanage abuse or human trafficking. There were only stories of overflowing orphanages of unwanted, undesirable, unloved, abandoned baby girls, thrown in cardboard boxes in the middle of a busy street. Oh, if only the nice Chinese government employee could find these baby girls in time and bring them to the angelic, heroic orphanages! According to China, the Uyghurs are loved. Didn't you see the Olympic opening ceremony? Let there be Peace on Earth. You don't see China printing about concentration camps. Is it that hard for people to believe that back in the day, perhaps, China wasn't exactly telling the truth?

Families were torn apart to satisfy a narcissist's desire to shape a country. Women were abused and tortured. Babies were trafficked and sold. Girls were raised to believe they were worthless, even when their birthparents tried their best to keep them safe. I'm never viewed as a survivor or someone who has trauma. I'm viewed as someone "lucky," "someone who came a long way," "someone chosen." In our quaint narratives, we lie to ourselves. We care more about whether our chicken eggs are ethically sourced than we do about where our babies come from. Bragging about how much we donated to an orphanage, without doing any research into whether orphanages have the best interests of our most vulnerable populations at heart. We dump our money into things we are told make us good people, but never really think about where the money goes, if in fact, we are perpetuating a system that hurts and hurts and hurts.

Part II.

In adoptee spaces that dominate Facebook, it is incredibly draining to read one thousand layers of reality. People who love the orphanage. People who donated to this and that. Volunteered at the orphanages. People who had their child stand in their so-called "finding spot" without a care for the emotional toll. 

Here, let's stand here. It's not a cutout of Donald Duck or Cinderella's castle. This is a fun, family vacation where we learn about you roots, remind you that you aren't really a part of our family, but from a beautiful foreign land...that left you to die. Oh, isn't it fun to have you pose in the place you could have died? Isn't it really great that we can make a photo album of photos of you standing in the place your mother abandoned you? Isn't it even better if I share these wonderful photos of your heart ripped out and stomped on and post it on Facebook to the adoring crowds of adoptive parents who are just as ignorant to the hearts and minds of those we claim to love? 

You might as well have led her to a noose and had her pose with it around her neck and said, "Just a little tighter, just a little higher, ah, perfect! Great shot! This will be great on my Facebook! #ChinaTrip #HeritageTour #FindingSpot #OrphanageMemories."

Comment: Wow, she's come a long way from the orphanage.

Comment: I went there last year. The nannies really CARE about the babies.

Comment: What a lucky girl!

Comment: We are so happy you adopted her because we love her sooooo much!

Comment: The Chinese people are terrible! So glad people like you are in the world to give these girls a home!

Then we have the people who think there's meaning under every fucking speck of dust. 

That every bird is a woman in disguise. Every whistle a secret code.

She has a small mole on her left foot. She has a brown eye. Her nose is slightly bent. Her ears are pointy. Her lips are thin. Her toe is small. It must mean something. Someone in China, a small country, must recognize her. The orphanage would never lie to us. She must be a local. Someone must know her. Who else in China has black hair like hers? Who else? Who else? She is special! The only girl born in 2000! The only one who wasn't malnourished! She must be a princess, she must be special...

And no one can bear to think for one moment..."I participated, however unwittingly, in an industry that commodifies infants. My money in the form of a feel-good donation was the financial incentive that people in China needed to obtain babies, to create orphans, to traffic infants across the nation. Some as far as 600 miles away. My participation exacerbated a national problem that abused women and children. I didn't mean for this to happen, but sometimes intentions don't matter."

All anyone can think is "Not me. Not my kid. She has a mole. She has a dimple. My kid wouldn't have been trafficked. That's absurd. It wasn't me. I didn't do it. It's some other families' problem. And we'll never know, will we? Because I refuse to look."

I have siblings and parents and grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents who I will never know. And many people, voyeurs, find this tragically appealing. We are protected and blissful in our ignorance. Not I. It is comforting for a spineless public to weep for the "could have beens" and a pretty little Chinese girl, cut off, oh so tragically, by an evil communist country, from her family. 

I? 

I would rather be trafficked than abandoned. One thousand times over.

What absolves you adoptive parents, what makes you heroes, is the villainy of our birthparents. The baby had nowhere else to go. You are heroes for adopting us.

When an adoptive parent realizes...without my participation in a human trafficking scheme, however unwittingly, there would have been fewer orphans in the first place. 

It shifts the story. Perhaps, the adoptive parents aren't the heroes after all. But who buys magazines and listens to podcasts? Buys NPR tote bags and reads the New York Times? Adoptive parents. Not birthparents. Who writes the stories that get published? Adoptive parents. 

Stories are written for and by adoptive parents about adoption and the adoption program and experience. You'll never read any other narrative but a grateful orphan, leveraging their bullshit tragic origin for a shot at an ivy league education. "Oh yes, I was left to die because I was born a girl. But thankfully, my loving mommy adopted me and I volunteered at my orphanage and learned Mandarin and...I'd really love to go to Harvard, because I believe in the American dream, that even a lowly Chinese orphan can go to the top of America's totem pole, and I believe in gender equality, because females matter too! And am I using the mass suffering of my people to selfishly benefit myself by perpetuating more false narratives about the Chinese adoption program? Shhh, don't tell anyone. I just reeeeaally want to go to Harvard and I'm reaaaaalllly grateful, lucky, and happy!"

I very purposefully refused to mention my adoption on any of my applications. I wanted to get in on merit. I wanted to experiment, push the system. If I couldn't get in on my own two feet, then I didn't want to get in at all. I'm no one's fucking charity case. I'm not a pet project. I'm not a brochure. I'm not a token.

Part III.

I used to think as a child, that I would die soon.

I had no concept of time, but I was terrified of death. I made a choice based on nothing but a void: I would not waste my time on earth by searching for my birthfamily and wasting everything for nothing.

I now realize that life is long and that life is precious and singular. I realize that a life without meaning is the real waste of time, that there can be no greater pain that wanting something and never trying. And if I died? I would be reunited in death. And if I was reincarnated, sent to heaven, gone, obliterated, that nothing would matter anyway. Why not now? What minutes were so precious and so worth protecting that I couldn't spend finding them? Rather than what? Another season of Ozark? Snacking on my couch? Doing another load of laundry?

I think of how tragic it is for foster care to rip apart siblings. It struck me yesterday that I am ripped apart, just like them. No one thinks of it like that. We think of it in the hypothetical. "Wouldn't it be cool if you had a twin?" It's fun and cute and silly. It isn't real. They. Aren't. Real. But they are. And they are living and may know who you are, that you existed, that you were a girl who "went away" or a girl who "was taken" or little baby that their birthmom still "cries over." Imagine growing up, fearing any minute that you'd be taken away too? What of their trauma? My birthfamily has memories. I don't.

Part IV.

My cousin gave birth again today, and that's a wonderful, beautiful thing. I often think about having a baby of my own. Of all the things I would do for them. All the love I would give. But it's just so hard to think about...before I was two, I had lived a life in an orphanage. I will relive these memories, want to seek out the photos of me in the orphanage as my child passes through that age. Proof that I existed before I became adopted. That I was alive before I was "reborn."

My cousin has a social media addiction. Her children have a social media presence before they've even left the womb. Tons of ultrasounds. 

Tons of pictures, every day. Eating, drinking, smiling. The first birthday was such a big deal. The baby shower, the gender reveal, the day of birth, the subsequent birthdays...All of these things did not happen for me. 

I was bathed in fear from birth, from a mother who knew she could not keep me. I was bathed in panic and anxiety, born and then removed. I was trafficked before I was one. I was placed in an orphanage until I was almost two.

No first birthday party for me.

It makes me sad and incredibly jaded. It makes me angry and resentful, depressed and hurt. It makes me want to gloat that I hope I'm hurting you, that I hope the reader feels guilty for all the shit I've had to live through. There's a vindictive pleasure in throwing your pain in someone's face and having them crumble. It's why someone in our China group told the waiter, "We met at the orphanage," just to make him sweat. It's knowing you hold in your hands a live fuse and wanting to throw it at something just to see it burn.

It's not holy. It's not good. It's not even as elegant as a "cry for help." It's, in so few words, "I want to be seen."

It's human nature, pure and simple. I'm not a saint. I'm just human and sometimes I just need a fucking hug. I want someone to see my pain and say, "Wow, that really fucking sucks." Not, try this medication, try this meditation, try this new therapy I found, try some healing stones.

There's nothing to fix. Sometimes life just sucks and we need to cry and talk and write about it. There's no lesson here. No moral to the story. My life is not on display for some anthropologist to write about, "Nature vs. Nurture in Transracial Adoptions." 

Part V.

We adoptees talk about pain like it's an aesthetic. 

Trauma like it's trendy. We talk with our lip gloss on about "our feelings" at the adoptee meet-up, like we're "being honest" with each other. A little anger is cute. A little sadness makes us human. A little curiosity never killed the cat. We talk on panels to a ravenous audience about "our pain" like it's a polite appetizer. "Oh yes, of course there's some hurt and happiness mixed together. Adoption is a journey!" But we don't go too deep. It's dark down there and scary, honest and raw. It's impolite, makes people uncomfortable. Makes us unattractive. It isn't cute. And honesty doesn't sell. Doesn't get us college scholarships. Doesn't get us sympathy. (Doesn't get us love.)

I've swallowed more feelings than I care to remember. Pushed down my pain because I was scared I'd be less loveable, less worthy, less valuable. I was deathly afraid of being called "ungrateful," of being accused of wanting too much, things above my station. Orphans don't get to dream. Orphans don't get to wish. Orphans don't get to want. That is what is woven into the fabric of our society. Orphans are not just children without parents, they are a social class, the bottom rung of society, street urchins, charity cases...orphans are burned into our brains. As children, it is impossible not to soak these lessons in, to understand that you do deserve love just as much as other children. We think we are foster children, we think we are temporary. 

We live like mice in a house we don't own, in a family that isn't ours, passing through like ghosts. And we tell you what you want to hear. We tell you what you expect, what you like. We know you better than you know yourself. We know you better than we know ourselves.

Sometimes, I just want to have everything slide into place. Wish upon a single star that I'll finally find my truth. Have something so disgustingly romantically right happen that I can believe there's someone up there looking out for me. I want to believe in all the bromides. Red threads and all. I want to believe that people don't sell other humans. I want the universe to tell me I'm wrong in one million different languages: "Yes, orphans do deserve to make wishes, just like every other child. Yes, orphans can want without being "ungrateful." You can want and covet, possess and desire, hope and selfishly wish. Because losing your birthparents doesn't make you worthless. It means absolutely nothing at all. Sometimes, bad things happen."