Growing up adopted

I have no idea who held me, fed me, looked into my eyes, changed my diapers, bathed me, and made me feel loved and wanted in this world for the first six weeks of my life. I was in foster care before going to my permanent home after being placed for adoption. This was to prevent any messy issues before the agreement was finalized -- to make sure the birth mother wasn't going to change her mind and break the hearts of the adopting couple. There had to be a clean break for the health of everyone involved.

My adoptive parents (referred to as "parents" from here on) were apparently told very little about my birth family, except that my birth mother was "a beautiful red-head with musical talent." That's it. Even that I wasn't privy to while growing up because back then, adoption agencies and social workers thought it was best for the adopting family to put the birth family out of its mind so that we could all bond as "normal," biological families do. The adoption wouldn't be final for another six months, so there was always that fear that my birthmother would change her mind and take me away from them.

Having to rely on adoption to start a family was the last thing my mother wanted to do. She didn't even realize she was unable to conceive until she was in her mid-20s, when a doctor revealed that the rupture of her appendix as a teen left her ovaries infected and useless. What a blow that must have been for her. All she ever wanted was a husband and family, to be a happy housewife for the rest of her life.

But like most adopting couples, they did their best to love and care for my brother and me -- even if we weren't from their bodies and didn't share their DNA. The adoption agencies did their best at matching us with families with similar ancestry. Since the agency knew I came from Irish, English, and German lineage, they hooked me up with the McKee clan. Amazingly enough, I ended up physically resembling my father and the women on his side of the family and my brother looked more like our mother and her relatives, who were English and Italian.

Matt and I always knew we were adopted. There was never a time when our parents sat us down and dropped that bombshell on us. My mom would always say "You are special because we chose you." I don't remember ever thinking much about being adopted while growing up in Houston, Texas. I had a happy, active, free childhood in our little upper-middle class neighborhood of Nottingham Forest. We lived at the end of a short cul de sac on Heatherfield, where nearly every house contained playmates and our grassy side yard served as a football field, the paved circle was our baseball diamond, and every moss-covered oak tree was a place to hide.

Looking back on it now, I don't remember either of our parents spending much time "playing" with us much during the days. That was probably Dr. Spock's doing, believing you can't be both a friend and a parent to your children. Oh, they had their fun moments: dad playing the "talking pumpkin" on Halloween and livening up my birthday parties with Bingo, mom reading "Rain Makes Applesauce" with me over and over and over and letting me dive under her legs at the pool. Mostly, though, our dad was busy making his fortune with his own management consultant business and our mom was occupied with tennis, bridge, sewing, and hanging out at the local tennis club with friends. My brother and I were involved in scouts, ballet or Judo, piano lessons, sleep-overs, climbing trees, swimming at the club, looking for snakes and frogs at Buffalo Bayou, and torturing babysitters. I also spent a lot of time with two main friends: Annick Hollister and AnnG Campbell. We are still friends to this day.

I didn't start wondering about my biological roots until I was about 13, the time many young people go through an identity crisis. My parents, whom everyone thought was the "perfect couple," had divorced a year or so earlier and my mom had married a man who moved us from Texas to Alaska -- about as far as we could get from my father, it seemed. To me, it was a great adventure, although tough to leave the only friends and home I'd ever known. My brother took the divorce much harder, believing our father's affair was his fault. Because of that, my brother easily slipped into using drugs and alcohol at 14 and I wasn't far behind.

I transformed from being a goody-goody, violin-toting "A" student to sneaking around to parties, lying to my mom and step-father, and not caring about my grades as much. The darker side of my step-father, Martin, also came to light when he was suddenly arrested for check and credit fraud and thrown in jail for a few days. I also had quite a crush on my 16-year-old step-brother, David, who took full advantage of that and became the first boy I ever "messed around" with. We never "went all the way," but came close enough. I'm not proud of that, but it helps explain the turmoil and confusion in my life at the time.

It also might help readers understand that by the time I was 14, I was fully-engrossed in the party lifestyle and losing my true self more and more. In addition to saving up my lunch money during the week to buy pot for the weekend, I tried acid and hallucinated with a friend at a "kiddy club" in Anchorage. I began getting involved with more boys. Tensions at home were mounting as my mother's relationship with Martin became more bizarre and disruptive. Martin, we figured out later, was probably bipolar. He was definitely a compulsive liar and con artist. Because of this, my mother had no idea what was going on in her children's lives. She never even attended parent-teacher conferences at school. She told me recently she was too embarrassed by her own screw-ups to interact with teachers. I watched Martin almost strangle my mom one day during an argument. I remember running down the stairs toward the kitchen to see what was going on and my mother yelling at me to go back to my room, saying it was all my fault, anyway.

Another time, Martin and my brother got in such a terrible fight, my brother grabbed a machete from the garage and probably would have used it if Martin hadn't pinned him on the floor and begun choking him. Why we didn't call 911, I'll never know. At least we would have found out that Martin had been in prison -- twice -- for fraud and never earned the civil engineering degree he claimed to have. Mom and I finally convinced Martin to get off of Matt and things went "back to normal" for awhile.

I continued to sneak out of the house and meet friends at parties. There was one particular party that became a turning point for my sanity. After having had a few beers and smoked a little hash, I was easily lured into a closet by a boy as others took note. Although we weren't in there for more than 10 minutes, it was long enough to lead others to believe we were doing more than just kissing. Shortly after coming out of that closet, I stumbled upstairs to go to the bathroom and was intercepted by a boy I had a mad crush on. He ended up following me into the bathroom. As fellow 8th graders were pounding on the bathroom door and trying to peek beneath it, the cutest boy in school attempted to have his way as he wriggled on top of my half-naked, shivering body.

I managed to convince the boy to let me up before he was able to stick his half-stiff penis inside me. With friends and enemies still pounding on the door, I struggled to get my clothes back on before he opened the door to flee. He kept telling me to put my shoes on, but I was still so out of it, I didn't understand the ramifications of coming out of the bathroom holding my shoes. That was all the kids at school needed to tarnish me a slut for the rest of my 8th-grade year. Food was thrown on me in the cafeteria, former friends confronted me in the girl's restroom, reminding me of my scarlet status. As I walked down the halls, I imagined everyone whispering about me, spreading more lies to further ruin my reputation. Pre-teens can be so cruel.

Break Down

It was all too much for me. I had a complete psychological break. My detachment from reality began one night while my mom and step-father were having a noisy fight. I slipped out the front door and began walking in the snow toward the home of a boyfriend I'd had in the 7th grade. I always remembered his mom being so sweet and accepting of everyone. He lived a few miles away, but I didn't care. I came across a German shepherd who appeared lost, too. I thought I could psychically communicate with the dog as it followed me to Todd's house. When I finally reached Todd's neighborhood, I became disoriented and ended up sitting in front of a stranger's house a couple of doors down, in the snow, waiting for someone to rescue me. Todd's sister happened along and took me in. I stayed with their family that night, then called my mom the next morning. She was frantic, which was strangely comforting.

But my troubles didn't end there. I continued to lose touch with reality for the next couple of months and at one point told my mom she was under Satan's power simply because she cut her hair. It was terrifying. Then, when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I blurted out the one thing no adopted child should ever say to his or her adoptive mother: In the middle of an argument over something stupid and inconsequential, I asked her why I should obey her and she said, "Because I'm your mother!" and -- before I could stop myself -- I yelled, "YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER!!" Horrible. She ran into the bathroom, sobbing, and continued to sob in the shower as I attempted to console her, telling her I didn't mean it.

It was such a hard time for our family and my twisted state of mind certainly didn't help. I don't know if having information on my birth mother would have done any good at that point, but perhaps knowing that she, too, had had break downs, we would have been more prepared for it. I eventually "snapped out of" whatever was plaguing me and was able to get on with a semi-normal life, although I always felt like the odd girl out, even in high school and college. That's probaly why I was still quite vulnerable to self-destructive behavior and what later led to an unintended pregnancy. More on that in another post. It's that pregnancy which changed my life forever and is the reason for this blog.

I found out later from the mother of my childhood friend, Annick, that I probably had a schizophrenic episode at age 14, which can appear like that only once in a person's life, then never reappear again. It can be brought on in young people by stress, drugs, and/or a genetic propensity and I was holding a royal flush. Annick's mom know what she's talking about because Annick was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 16 and had a very rough time getting stabilized for the next few decades. Her parents founded Narsad Artworks, which helps raise funds and awareness for those suffering from schizophrenia and depression by allowing artists afflicted with either to sell their beautiful paintings via greeting cards, pottery, T-shirts, murals, etc. Annick is one of those incredible artists and is doing very well on her own now, thanks to the right combination of medications and the continued love and support from her family and friends.