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Status Update

Sorry to have been gone so long…

I haven’t had as much time to write lately with all of the things that have been going on in my life. Sometimes it seems as though life kind of goes in spurts where there are full stretches of frenzied activity and then some slower time where things are kind of normal. I notice as I’ve gotten older that the lull time where the pace slows down get shorter and shorter.

I made it through the holidays without any major breakdowns. Without any tears or sadness. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I can try to believe that my Korean family doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway. And there is peace in that delusion because I can try to just be one part of myself and celebrate with my adoptive family and my fiance without feeling as though I don’t really belong.

With this new year I hope to gain a little bit more peace as well as hopefully another piece of my history. I look forward to becoming a family with my fiance, and all of the little things this strange life has to offer us.

Some Extra Cash!

Our apartment complex told us that we are going to save 300 dollars on our rent this month because I referred them to my employer’s corporate discount program!

I have all of my christmas either bought or budgeted out, and with the wedding date pushed back (i.e. more time to save up for that…) I finally have a little extra cash for me to dedicate to finding my mom. I’m going to send for it next week!

What a sweet/bittersweet Christmas gift this paperwork will be…

My Silence on National Adoption Month

This month is known as National Adoption Month. A lot of my adopted buddies and the people whose blogs I peruse have written about it. I thought about writing a post each day of this month, or at least writing a post about it. But mostly I decided to forgo posting about NAM and focus on what really matters….

Wedding planning.

Just kidding. But National Adoption Month was not meant to be about me, my adopted sister or buddies, or my adoptive mom, or even my natural mom. It was meant to be about spreading awareness of the need for adoptive families for foster kids. I don’t want to take away from that, because people really could use an education on what Foster Care adoptions are all about.

The Stigma is Still Strong

I just wanted to share this article that was in the New York Times about the stigma against unwed mothers in Korea. The little bit of information I have about my natural mom, was that she was a single woman involved in an affair with coworker. Here in America, I think a lot of women might choose to keep and raise their baby. But in Korea, even in 2009, the stigma against unwed mothers persists. This makes it difficult for them to obtain and keep jobs or find places to live. These women face discrimination and ostracization from their friends and families.

This article highlights the difficult times that force 70 percent of unwed Korean moms to relinquish their children for adoption.

Check it out and tell me what you think.

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How Will I Look When I Get Old?

No one ever really talks about how adoption screws with your future. I mostly talk about how my past was affected by being surrendered. Or if I do talk about the future, it’s to wonder about medical history and genetic stuff. But lately, as I’ve thought a lot about aging, I realized there are a lot of things I’m missing from my view of the future such as something as simple as knowing more than one generation of your DNA. And that is something I think far too many people take for granted.

You see a lot of yourself in your family. Where you came from, where you are, and where you will be. I know where I am, and a good chunk of where I came from, but there are no clues laid out for me as to where I might be headed in the future. Most people look at their parents, their grandparents, and can see patterns of aging. It’s not an exact science. It’s kind of a look into the future. It may not be exact, but it’s a glimpse, a preview.

As of today I’m twenty two years and some odd months old. I’m still young, still in my prime years. I don’t have wrinkles and my energy levels are high and my hips still slimmed by a fast metabolism. I don’t know what the future of my body, my face, my skin, bring. I watch my adoptive parents as they are getting older and wonder a lot about my natural family. I wonder if they’re young still or if they are getting closer to being senior citizens. I wonder if my mom has wrinkles or if her skin is still taut. If she is still healthy or if she has developed a disease. The kind of things I really need to know about my future, I can only get from her. She is really the missing link I need to chain my past and future to the present.

Will I earn a set of family hips after childbearing? Does my family go gray early? Do we wrinkle easily or age gracefully? A picture or two might help me figure some of things out, and of course time will tell how things play out for me. But a part of me just yearns to be able to have that tiny little glimpse of the future through my mother and grandmother’s eyes.

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Making Friends

Today I went out for a spa date with a good friend of mine. She’s been my friend for a couple years now. We ‘re former coworkers. Like most of my friends, she didn’t like me when we first met. It took a while for us to get to know each other before we were able to be friends. K’s husband is in the military. They’re probably going to be moving back to their hometown soon, about three thousand miles away. I’m already missing her and our friendship.

This morning at the spa we got to talking about another mutual friend. She moved away earlier this year. Went back to her hometown to finish her education and get away from her estranged husband for a while. S was a good friend to me. We were good enough friends that I could really be honest with her about my adoption and my sadness. She was really a great support to me in a time of deep depression. I miss her almost every day.

It’s always been hard for me to make friends, especially with women. I don’t trust people very easily, and I always feel awkward when I meet new people. But my friendship with S is one I was proud of because I was able to break of my shell to initiate a true, solid relationship.

After the appointment I got to thinking about how all of the people I get close to end up leaving. I wonder if there’s a subconcious thing going on in my mind attracting me to people who will leave, almost enticing me to befriend people who will eventually have to walk away. It doesn’t seem to be just coincidence that I have very few lasting relationships. Over time, most people I connect with, drift away from me. This subconscious attraction is opposite of what I would hope for. I desire permanent, loyal relationships, yet I bring myself good, but fleeting friendships.

Could it be that I’m setting myself up to replay abandonments? It seems that I end up in the position of the one who gets left rather than the place of the leaver. I know I’m a good person, worthy of love and friendship, but at times I worry that I’m subconsciously setting myself up for failure.

Eyes

It’s kind of hard for me to post about this here. But I pour out my heart about everything else, so why not, right?

A few days ago, pretty much by chance, I found a blog on makeup design. It got me thinking about the way I do my makeup and how it’s difficult to know exactly how to make my Asian eyes look their best. I googled Asian eye makeup and found a site of a plastic surgeon who performs eyelid surgery for Asians.

These stupid eyes of mine. They don’t have a crease. The eyelids are broad and cover a lot of my eyes, making them look small. My eyelashes point down instead of up like those of my parents and my friends. I’ve always hated my eyes. Always.

Yeah, it would hurt to have the surgery. It would be painful for weeks, maybe months. But how much is a little physical pain in comparison to twenty two years of emotional pain? How much is that when you compare it to twenty two years of self loathing?

And I’m sick of the people who make comments like “Oh but you’re trying to make yourself look white” if I want to get highlights in my hair, go to the tanning bed, or get a nose ring. Why is it that anytime a minority wants to look different, we hate our race? Why can’t I like my race and want to straighten my hair or get a tattoo? Maybe I just want to look a way that will make ME happy.

In Asian culture, this is a huge surgery. Probably on the same level that boob jobs and botox are in America. Most Asian celebrities (including Jackie Chan, who people like to compare Koreans to even though he’s Chinese) have had the surgery. Young women often have the surgery as a graduation present or a coming of age type gift. It’s arguably the number one surgery in Asia. Do all of those REAL Asians really just want to look white? I doubt it.

I’m on the fence about it myself. I think I would like to be able to wear eyeshadow on my eyelids like everyone else, and have eyelashes that point towards the ceiling instead of the ground. I would like to look at myself and be a little happier with myself. But will I see someone impowered, or am I just going to see someone broken who hated herself so much she paid someone to cut open her eye and sew a crease in it?

I’m so utterly fucked up.

Babies

I never thought I would want to have kids. Never. I always thought of myself as a feminist, an independent type of person, someone who needed adventure and mystery. I couldn’t imagine having a child to keep me back.

Right now I’m 22, my fiancé and I just moved into a larger apartment with a spare bedroom and a second bath. This is my largest place ever and I feel like we are really becoming a family, him and I. As I work on planning our wedding, I think a lot about our future. I think of buying a house, settling down, and making babies with him. And when I think of the babies, I get this strange sensation inside. A little bit of excitement, and a little bit of longing.

I was always fascinated by pregnant women. Their round, full bellies seemed magical to me. I could never help but stare at these women out in public as though I was sort of drawn to them. I remember being a child and going up to a “pregnant” mannequin and lifting up her shirt to feel her belly only to be punished by my mom for touching things. Even now as an adult I am still mesmerized by expectant moms. I look at their beautiful bellies and am completely in awe that there is a PERSON in there.

I do want to do that. I want to carry a baby in my belly, bond with him, sing to him, laugh with him, and bring him to life. I want to see that he knows me, that he is familiar with me. That he is the only person that might ever really know me because he came from me.

That is where my parenting worries begin. I sort of fear the fact that I so so want a child, that I want to carry one so much. I feel like part of me is being really selfish bringing a child into the world, as volatile and crazy as it is. And yes, there are a lot of children in foster care that really need people to care for them. But I just don’t know if I can live without knowing what it’s like to feel a primal bond between mother and child. Is it too much to ask for that bond to heal a little piece of my heart?

I know it is too much to ask of any child. Doesn’t that make me just as bad as my parents? Adopting a child to fill a void is just as bad as having a baby to fill up the piece where my mom should be right? Even as I write this, I’m in complete turmoil with myself over it. I can’t really rationalize how I feel, but I know that these feelings are raw and not going anywhere anytime soon.

Is it rational to fear that I might not be able to conceive? No. Not particularly. I’m young, in my prime baby making years, and to my very limited medical history knowledge I have no health concerns.

Most of this comes from the fear that I might never get to understand the bond between mother and child. I didn’t have a primal bond with my adoptive mom. The bond I have with her is based more on our shared history than anything else. I am terrified that I won’t be able to find my natural mom and that even when I do, there won’t be room for a meaningful relationship since the language and cultural barriers are so huge. And then there is the chance that she may not even be alive.

I feel as though getting some of what I missed might heal me a little. Just a little. On the other hand I’m scared that it’ll make it worse.

Getting a Visual

A while back, I wrote a post about how I felt I related to the main character in the movie Wolverine. I identified with him and his lack of identity. A lot of tragic characters are relatable to people. After all, why would we want to spend ten dollars to sit in a dark room and watch these people’s stories if we were not at least on some level, able to relate to them?

Last night I went to see the film adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. The film tells the story of Henry, who time travels due to a genetic anomaly, and his love, Clare over the span of twenty years in and out of time.

When I originally read the book, I never really thought too deeply into the significance of the constant abandonment and how potentially triggering that really was for me. But as I sat in the theater and watched him disappear time after time in front of his wife’s eyes, I could not help but think about how afraid I would be to constantly be alone. There was just something about getting a visual of constantly being left that brought a lot of issues to the surface.

It’s interesting to me that I see abandonment everywhere. In books and movies, in a song on the radio, and in the way that the last little bit of sun leaves the patio at the end of the day. I seek these tales of abandonment like I’m looking for the fountain of youth. I really yearn for the ones that turn out okay. Maybe the abandoner finds his way back to the abandonee. Maybe the abandonee takes revenge. Maybe the abandoner grovels his or her way back into the abandonees heart and everything works out perfectly okay. In these scenarios I constantly see all the ways I could end up alone and try to work myself out of them.

Maybe it’s a survival mechanism. You know, in case it happens again?

In The Time Traveler’s Wife, Clare knows that Henry is coming back to her eventually. Each time he leaves, she knows he will be back after he’s done with his travels. In my real life, I wait for my mother to come back to me. For us to find one another. But I don’t know that she will ever make it back to me. Heck, I’m not 100 percent sure she would even want me back if she could get me back. Maybe our story is more meant to mirror a bad breakup. The farther she tries to go from me, the more I want her?

I desperately hope not. I really hope she misses me just as much as Fievel missed his little brother in An American Tale.

So are these displays of my innermost thoughts and fears yet another way that I allow my subconscious to torture me? Or are they really a teaching tool designed to help me through some of these difficult emotions?

I really can’t be sure.