A Piece of My Writing: The realization of having been abandoned…

Being adopted doesn’t necessarily mean that I was saved.

It doesn’t matter how great of a life I had after, the fact remains that as a baby I was abandoned, by anyone, and everyone who knew that I existed.

Think about that for a second.

That realization hurts.

It’s a logical emotion in response to that knowledge.

There’s no telling me to get over it.

There’s no telling me I’m wrong for feeling this way.

The life I have had after doesn’t make up for feelings around that abandonment.

Because no matter what, being adopted hasn’t been an easy ride.

It’s been filled with guilt.

Guilt for feeling that when things were tough at home, you could actually have had a different family.

If only this other, wonderful, loving, stable couple who would have been filled with love, attention, affection, and harmony would have adopted you instead.

Then you would have grown up happy and not having to hear your parents fight.

The parents that adopted you, the parents who chose to fly to the other side of the world to bring you home, and now they are fighting, screaming at each other, not considering for one second what that does to you to have to hear that.

And because you weren’t born by the mother who is screaming at your father, and because you weren’t conceived by the father who is ignoring your mother, now you are awake at night wishing another family would’ve been the one to adopt you.

And for that, you feel guilty.

Although none of it is your fault.

You were left.

You were abandoned.

Yet you are supposed to fulfill the role of daughter to a couple who can’t stand one another.

And years later, when you start searching for your origin, many years later, long after you have come to terms with how things were growing up, and after you have taken distance from it all by moving halfway across the world, you start realizing that there is a slight chance that your adoption wasn’t even supposed to have happened in the first place.

Now, can you tell me again that I should be grateful?

Written by Amanda Medina

January 17th, 2018

PS. We are all in this together!