(Scroll down or click the links to read Adoption 1, Adoption 2, and Adoption 3 first.)

My parents adopted me when I was 9 days old. They had tried for four years to have children of their own, but couldn’t conceive. They adopted me, then within four years had two sons of their own.

Did you know adoption was a cure for infertility? It is sometimes.

Problem was, I was an ugly baby. Holy god! I’m talking strangers-smile-politely-then-turn-away ugly. When the call came from the agency saying they had a baby available, my parents had to take whatever baby they had. Even if it wasn’t a pretty baby. Even if it had medical problems (I needed eye surgery by the age of four). Even if it wasn’t a boy.

In the pictures below, you can see the bloom is already quickly coming off of the rose of this “adopted brat” thing. And as photos go, these are the best of the best - my mother gave them to me to include in the slideshow to be shown at their 40th anniversary party. I can’t imagine what facial expressions of disgust are in the pics she decided to keep for herself. You can see in the pictures below that she is clearly contemplating roasting me, and my dad is thinking of tying me to the hood of his car.

My mother is Ms. Sorority. Sometimes, everything is about her, and her getting attention and looking good to others. She got plenty of attention for adopting a “poor, unwanted” baby. (An unwanted baby that there was a 2 year waiting list for! ) After the adoption and the attention she got for it, she was in her element for a while, I would imagine.

But then she found out she could have her own. She had two beautiful baby boys born 13 months apart from each other, cute and perfect in every way.

But yet she still had me, and she had no way to change that.

Growing up, my brothers didn’t like me. At all. I’m not talking normal sibling rivalry, I’m talking hate and resentment that little children just don’t normally have. It was like I was living in a clubhouse, but I was never invited to join. My two brothers were their own club. My parents were a second club. All four of them together were a third club. By God, I was going to join their goddamn clubs!

My childhood was spent trying to win approval, and withdrawing in despair when I couldn’t get it. I shared my toys. Some days I’d spend all afternoon cleaning my brothers’ rooms (to try and get in good with them AND my mom). I remember sitting and thinking, “How will I get them to like me?” I’d follow them around, even spy on them, to try and figure it out.

Spying became my favorite game. I was determined to unravel the mystery of what the problem was… why I was such an outsider in my family. Usually my brothers were the focus of my spying, but one day while spying I overheard a conversation between my parents that I will never forget.

When I was in fifth grade, my younger brother Mark got sick with stomach pains. He even went to the hospital for it. The doctors couldn’t understand what was causing it. He ended up being fine - they never found a reason for it - but for about a week we didn’t know if he’d be OK or not.

One afternoon, I was in the living room while my parents were in the kitchen, talking about my brother’s condition. They must have not known I was home, and me being a super-awesome ninja spy, I was not going to alert them to this fact.

The spying game took an unfortunate “bummer!” turn when I overheard my mother saying to my father that it was my fault my brother was sick in the hospital. That I “kept the house in turmoil” and “made” my brother sick. (Yes, now you know my secret. I was the most powerful and evil fifth grader ever to exist. Bow down before me!) She spoke of me with such anger and contempt, it made my blood run cold.

I don’t remember how she rationalized blaming me, nor do I remember the rest of the conversation. I do know it involved me, and regret that I was in their household. It was pretty ugly. It wasn’t just the words and the feelings that shocked me, or the fact that I had spent so many years trying for their approval just to find out they blamed me for these huge problems (after all, I might be killing my brother with my very presence in the household). I think the most shocking thing of all was to find out that how they acted when I was around was a strained act they could barely contain. It made me wonder who else in my world secretly couldn’t stand me and was just pretending.

I stayed in the living room and hid behind the piano until I could sneak away, feeling like the world had come to an end. I had made my brother sick, and I didn’t even understand how I did it. Also, it was the first time I had heard my mother confirm what I felt all along: that I was an unwelcome burden, an intruder.

I must emphasize that overall I was a good kid. Annoying yes, but I almost never got in trouble, I made good grades, I had plenty of friends. To this day I can’t see how my parents could blame me for making their house one of “turmoil” at that point in my life (teenage years still being a few years away).

When I was about 21 or 22, I had it out with my mother about a lot of things. One of those things we discussed was why my brothers had hated me all my life. I told mom it was because they picked up on my parents feelings towards me, and imitated them. She acknowledged that my guess was probably true. It was a victory for me.

But still to this day, it’s hard living with the knowledge that when my parents look back at their life, I was by far their worst decision. Their biggest mistake. I also realize that, being an unwanted pregnancy and the whole adoption thing, that I was very likely considered one of the worst life mistakes made by my biological parents too. And let’s sprinkle in the fact that I can point to at least a few men who would consider me their biggest mistake in life, and it’s an esteem-shattering self-realization that is no treat to live with.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 5:02 am and is filed under Personal.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.