Adoption is ... looking into a room from the outside, wondering when you'll be allowed to join in. It's being the lonely child in the middle of the playground, with no friends to support you when you need them. It's standing in the middle of the classroom, knowing all the answers but never being allowed to speak. It's trying to find love but pushing it away because you don't believe anyone can love you for yourself.
I am adopted. I am the child in the playground staring at you with those huge, haunted eyes. I'm the little girl who was ripped from her mother's arms and told that a strange woman and man were her new mummy and daddy. I'm the child that was never wanted, never loved and never thought of as anything more than a liability. I'm the screaming teenager throwing words of anger at you like spears because that's all I've ever known - all I've ever felt is the deep, deep rage of a child who was never cared for in the way that she should have been. I'm that adult with the haunted look at the back of her eyes, the woman who can never trust anyone to love her because all she's ever known is men saying they love her and then walking away like she's nothing. I'm the woman who can't believe that anyone would see past the pain and say "I will help you through this and love you for the rest of my life" because who says that nowadays? Only liars and cheats.
Adoption is being given away like an unwanted parcel. It's a glass wall between you and happiness, an invisible barrier that you can never cross. It's knowing that the people you call your family aren't really your family, they're just people who took on what your biological family didn't want to try and cope with, or couldn't cope with because they're dead. Adoption is trying to find your home but knowing that you never will, searching forever but never finding your roots.
I am adopted. I am the ball of rage that came spewing out into this world, I am the toddler who never learned to say "I love you". I am the child who wouldn't cuddle anyone for fear of being left behind, the child who ran to keep up because she was scared of losing the only parents she'd ever known. I'm the girl who hated everything and everyone, the teenager who slit her arms in two just to feel a different kind of pain. I'm the woman who still cries herself to sleep at night, the woman who tried to find her biological parents and ended up heartbroken more than once.
I am adopted.
I will never be part of your world, nor will you ever be part of mine.
