Reddit asks: What are usually the challenges of adoptees who have unknown parents? And unknown facts of birth?

I wrote this in a blog post in response to This thread

However, I do feel it’s worth sharing on its own. It’d help to not feel so lonely in it all. I’m ok with being alone. It’s the loneliness that hurts.

Ok. Here we go. I am gonna apologize now for the novel I’m going to write. If you make it to the end, just know I truly appreciate you.

Heh. In short, What’s the biggest challenge of having unknown parents and unknown facts of birth:
   The unknown is the biggest question and hurdle. How do you become ok with not having facts that you don’t even know you need?

In long:  
    I was found on the side of the road in San Salvador, El Salvador in 1988 when I was around 3 months old. It was during their Civil War and I was brought to an orphanage where I was eventually adopted out by a white woman from Michigan and came home in August of 1989.

   My “origin story” as my son calls it, seems just that. A Marvel origin story, so outlandish and far-fetched that there is no way it can be true. But that’s what I grew up being told. A crazy story that I had repeated to me for as long as I can remember. I remember being 4 years old and anxious at my grandmother’s house when it was nap time and I’d cuddle with her on the couch while she “told me stories in my ear” and I’d eventually fall asleep. So, while being adopted was never hidden from me, I was never able to fully connect with my beginnings. Starting a story on chapter two, or joining a new show on season two seems to be the most accurate analogy I’ve found for that feeling.

   My birth certificate says (in Spanish) that I was “born on or around March 22, 1988.” My birthday is just another day. Not truly mine, just a random day assigned based on how old they guessed me to be when I was found. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE birthdays. Just not my own. Your birthday is special. The day you took your first breaths of life. Typically filled with so much love, raw emotion, and family. My birthday feels like a pity. A burden. Something I have to have but was cheapened with guesswork and randomness; it’s just a day because I had to have one. I prefer to celebrate my Adoption Day. Concrete, legally binding, factual documents saying this significant event took place on August 16, 1989. There’s no guesswork, no denying, nothing. Just facts. I love that. I love holding on to those facts and tidbits because it’s NOT a made-up, random, outlandish fabrication like most of my beginnings are.

   As a kid my most asked questions revolved around my biological family; namely, “Where’s my dad?” / “Why don’t I have a dad?”
The answer was always the same. Patient,  age-appropriate,  and honest. Generally some form of, “I never married and never will. Your biological father must’ve passed away in the war. But I know he and your biological mom loved you so much.”
Ok, well the love of a stranger meant fuck-all to eight-year-old me. But she always explained the process of when I was found and how they had to publish they found me. No one came for me. I was always told I was very healthy for the circumstances, and so I was always told I was SOOO loved. I was taken care of and loved and something terrible had to have happened because a baby isn’t that healthy for someone to just discard, or was unwanted.  I’ve always appreciated that part; whether it’s true or not.

Elementary age also was filled with other questions like, “What about siblings?? Can I have one? I won’t even be picky! Can we just adopt a sister then? Ooh, can I have an OLDER sister?? Nah, I wanna be the oldest. Oooh! Can we adopt a sister from CHINA? Yeah! Cause then when I turn 13 we can go to El Salvador. And then when SHE’S 13, we can all go back to China! It’ll be great!”
That answer was always, absolutely the fuck not.  Siblings were not a thing I’d ever experience. 
Nor was going back to El Salvador. Even though the plan was always at age 13 (I honestly have no idea why that age was chosen, it just was).

My teen years focused more on me. “Where’d this crazy, frizzy hair come from?? Do I look like my biological mother? I wonder how tall my parents were? Am I doomed to be 5’3” forever??? (That answer is “yes” by the way) Why did I go through puberty early? WHAT KIND OF MEDICAL CONDITIONS AM I SUSCEPTIBLE TO???” Even when I’d explain to a new doctor that I was adopted, they would keep pressing for info until I’d lose my shit and yell, “They’re dead. I came here at 17 months from El Salvador. No. I can’t just ask someone.” The rest of the visit would be filled with awkward silence. So cool right? 

I’ve joked since my teen years that I was “raised white.” It was my mom and me. That was it. While she had nothing but the best intentions, I lost a LOT of my heritage. I spoke Spanish when I came here when I was 17 months old but no one else in my extended family did. I took two years of Spanish in high school and felt so uncomfortable and awkward that I ended up skipping that class the entire second year. The most Spanish I can speak is when I order off the Taco Bell menu. I cry about it if I think about it too long.  With that, I also didn’t celebrate any Hispanic holidays or traditions. I wasn’t white enough to feel I belonged but also not brown enough to be Hispanic in the sense of traditions, culture, and holidays. It honestly didn’t bother me until 6th grade. 

Sixth grade was the year we had to do family trees. There are not enough adjectives in the English language for me to accurately describe the humiliation, embarrassment, shame, and dejection felt from that experience. While everyone else got to make awesome, creative trees that opened up amazing avenues of conversation for my classmates and their parents, I got to make my mom’s family tree and I was the apple, sitting on the ground next to the tree. None of it was mine. It wasn’t MY family. It was my mom’s origins, her family name, and her history. I was such a tiny part of that in comparison. I still think Mrs. Davis was a total bitch for that one. Even after my mom and I talked to her about my history, she still insisted I complete the project as assigned. Fuck you, dude. 
Not that I should be shocked, but this was the same teacher who while on a field trip to view Christmas Tree displays from around the world insisted on taking a picture of me in front of the El Salvador tree and posting it in our class and on her newsletter after I asked she didn’t because I didn’t like the tree and it made me feel really weird and sad.

Anyway. So the point of THAT was that school fucking sucks for that part. And that’s just the shit with the social studies teacher. Never mind all the fucked up things that TEENAGERS say. 
I have heard more fucked up things from my classmates about my biological family than I care to recount. From being told I killed my biological parents, to being told my adoptive mom doesn’t love me because she bought me, to if my biological family knew how weird I was they’d kill themselves anyway, to all sorts of horrid things. Ones even WORSE than the ones mentioned (those are the “tamer” words my mind hasn’t completely blurred out by now). Things I never once even dreamed of, I was now sitting and obsessing over. Good times. Middle school was fantastic for that.

     I’m sure it’ll come as zero surprise that from all of that, I was severely depressed by the time I was 15. I was self-injuring like crazy and I remember my thoughts were obsessive and I just wanted to “be with my biological family. That’s where I belonged. That’s what was supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to leave El Salvador. I wasn’t supposed to have a second chance. I’m selfish and terrible and the reason all these people are now gone.”  It’s a weight I no longer carry, fully. I do know better now. But some days I still wrestle with the thought and pressure of wasting a second chance.

   At age 23, I gave birth to my first child. Post pardum depression and anxiety were a bitch.  I sobbed the first few months after I had her. Felt guilty on multiple levels and being cheated ate at me. I wanted my biological mother. Pregnancy, labor and delivery, and the first three months after were a scary mess. I’d ask my mom for support or comfort and she did her best, but her honesty of, “I’ve never been through this” ate at me more than it should have.  For kids number two and three I felt a bit more confident but just thinking of having these tiny, newborn babies ripped from me like my biological mother had to endure still brings me to tears and my youngest is 7 now.  Not knowing how my birth was, the date, time, or anything has always been hard to not have. So I make sure to celebrate and remember those details for my kids. They don’t appreciate the mundane facts now, but maybe one day.

     We all know family is what you create. That family isn’t always blood and it’s just people committed to love, compassion, and honesty. I think the rise of blended families has helped with that too. I longed for basically all of my childhood for a large, crazy family with two parents. I have that now. From my own creation. And it poses its unique challenges  because I want to do all these family-oriented activities that I never got to do and they’re just like, “Uh I’m good dude.” Like playing board games for instance. My mom hates board games and refused to play them ever. I vividly remember being in second grade (my son’s current age) and playing Monopoly Jr by myself. I’d set up 3 or 4 tokens, take turns rolling for each “player,” and spend hours playing games by myself. That or I’d read. I’d be able to get lost in a world, that was better than dealing with questions I’ll never get answers to, and learning how to be ok with that in my present reality.

Nowadays I try to find the silver lining in the unknown. It’s hard. But I also learned early on how to be alone and how that’s totally different (to me) than being lonely. I came into this world alone essentially. I can’t take anyone with me when I leave this plane of existence. Learning how to be reliant on myself, how to listen to all parts of myself, and being able to write my own story have been major accomplishments. My story might start in Chapter 2, but the pages between are filled with love, hope, and learning. I have so many questions from my almost 35 years of existence. But I’ve found that even if I could sit down with my biological parents, I wouldn’t take the opportunity to ask all those burning questions either.
Because none of it matters. I’d simply tell them Thank you. Thank you for loving me enough to take the hugest leap of faith and let me have a second chance.

How much I weighed when I was born doesn’t matter.

Hell. The day doesn’t even matter anymore.

Because all of those weird, imperfect, crazy, random facts do not compare to the dreams I have, the love I hold, and the hope I have to someday be able to look in the mirror and just be able to say, “You’re more than your origin story. You are all the chapters and efforts of everyone that chose to love you and care about you. For now and for forever.” 

That day will come. Like anything, it takes a commitment to move forward and to handle it with grace and love. Where love grows, nothing truly dies. It evolves and becomes something as uniquely special as we each are.